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  3. The dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, e

The dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, e

admin2015-03-25  70
问题     The dawn of the oil age was fairly recent. Although the stuff was used to waterproof boats in the Middle East 6,000 years ago, extracting it in earnest began only in 1859 after an oil strike in Pennsylvania. The first barrels of crude fetched $18. It was used to make kerosene, the main fuel for artificial lighting. Other liquids produced in the refining process were burned or dumped. But the unwanted petrol and diesel did not go to waste for long, thanks to the development of the internal-combustion engine a few years later.
    Since then demand for oil has risen steadily alongside ever-increasing travel by car, plane and ship. Three-fifths of it ends up in fuel tanks. With billions of Asian people growing richer and itching to get behind the wheel of a car, the big oil companies, the International Energy Agency(IEA)and America’s Energy Information Administration all predict that demand will keep on rising.
    We believe that they are wrong, and that oil is close to a peak. This is not the "peak oil" widely discussed several years ago, when several theorists reckoned that supply would flatten and then fall. We believe that demand, not supply, could decline. In the rich world oil demand has already peaked: it has fallen since 2005.
    The first revolution was led by a Texan who has just died. George Mitchell championed "fracking" as a way to release huge supplies of "unconventional" gas from shale beds. This, along with vast new discoveries of conventional gas, has recently helped increase the world’s reserves from 50 to 200 years. ln America, where thanks to Mr. Mitchell shale gas already billows from the ground, liquefied or compressed gas is finding its way into the tanks of lorries, buses and local-delivery vehicles.
    The other great change is in automotive technology. Rapid advances in engine and vehicle design also threaten oil’s dominance. Foremost is the efficiency of the internal-combustion engine itself. Petrol and diesel engines are becoming ever more frugal. The materials used to make cars are getting lighter and stronger. The growing popularity of electric and hybrid cars, as well as vehicles powered by natural gas or hydrogen fuel cells, will also have an effect on demand for oil.
    Not surprisingly, the oil "supermajors" and the IEA disagree. They point out that most of the emerging world has a long way to go before it owns as many cars, or drives as many miles per head, as America. But it would be foolish to extrapolate from the rich world’s past to booming Asia’s future. The sort of environmental policies that are reducing the thirst for fuel in Europe and America by imposing ever-tougher fuel-efficiency standards on vehicles are also being adopted in the emerging economies.
According to the passage, George Mitchell
选项 A、discovered the "unconventional" gas from shale beds.
B、predicted the world’s oil reserve could last for 200 years.
C、found a successful way of gathering "unconventional" gas.
D、noticed that "unconventional" gas could be used as fuel.
答案C
解析 事实细节题。根据题干关键词George Mitchell定位到第四段。该段第二句明确表示，乔治·米切尔成功地通过“液压破碎法”将大量的“非常规”气体从页岩床中释放出来。由此可知，他的贡献在于找到了收集提取“非传统”气体的方法，因此选[C]。文章没有提到是谁首先发现了“非常规”气体，故排除[A]；文章中没有提到乔治·米切尔对石油储备年限进行了推测，故排除[B]；文章也没有提到是乔治·米切尔首先发现“非常规”气体可以用作燃料的，排除[D]。
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