2. 外语
  3. Is there enough oil beneath the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge(保护区)(ANWR)to help secure America’s energy future? President Bush

Is there enough oil beneath the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge(保护区)(ANWR)to help secure America’s energy future? President Bush

admin2013-06-17  47
问题     Is there enough oil beneath the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge(保护区)(ANWR)to help secure America’s energy future? President Bush certainly thinks so. He has argued that tapping ANWR’s oil would help ease California’s electricity crisis and provide a major boost to the country’s energy independence. But no one knows for sure how much crude oil lies buried beneath the frozen earth, with the last government survey, conducted in 1998, projecting output anywhere from 3 billion to 16 billion barrels.
    The oil industry goes with the high end of the range, which could equal as much as 10% of U. S. consumption for as long as six years. By pumping more than 1 million barrels a day from the reserve for the next two to three decades, lobbyists claim, the nation could cut back on imports equivalent to all shipments to the U.S. from Saudi Arabia. Sounds good. An oil boom would also mean a multibillion-dollar windfall(意外之财)in tax revenues, royalties(开采权使用费)and leasing fees for Alaska and the Federal Government. Best of all, advocates of drilling say, damage to the environment would be insignificant. "We’ve never had a document case of oil rig chasing deer out onto the pack ice," says Alaska State Representative Scott Ogan.
    Not so fast, say environmentalists. Sticking to the low end of government estimates, the National Resources Defense Council says there may be no more than 3.2 billion barrels of economically recoverable oil in the coastal plain of ANWR, a drop in the bucket that would do virtually nothing to ease America’s energy problems.  And consumers would wait up to a decade to gain any benefits, because drilling could begin only after much bargaining over leases, environmental permits and regulatory review. As for ANWR’s impact on the California power crisis, environmentalists point out that oil is responsible for only 1% of the Golden State’s electricity output and just 3% of the nation’s.
We learn from the second paragraph that the American oil industry ______.
选项 A、believes that drilling for oil in ANWR will produce high yields
B、tends to exaggerate America’s reliance on foreign oil
C、shows little interest in tapping oil in ANWR
D、expects to stop oil imports from Saudi Arabia
答案A
解析 综合归纳。第二段第一句中“the high end”指上一段最后一句政府对该地区石油储量的高端估计，即“16 billion barrels”。美国石油工业支持政府的高端预测，认为这样的储量相当于美国六年消费量的10%，在未来二三十年里，如果每天开采一百万桶，国家减少的石油进口将等于现在从沙特进口的石油。由此推断选项A)“美国石油工业相信开采ANWR地区的石油会有高产出”是正确的。
转载请注明原文地址:https://kaotiyun.com/show/t907777K
0

大学英语四级

相关试题推荐
随机试题
最新回复(0)