Is there enough oil beneath the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (保护区) (ANWR)

游客2024-02-29  13

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 barreis.
    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 barreis 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 documented case of an 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 barreis 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. [br] What does President Bush think of tapping oil in ANWR?

选项 A、It will increase America’s energy consumption.
B、It will exhaust the nation’s oil reserves.
C、It will help reduce the nation’s oil imports.
D、It will help secure the future of ANWR.

答案 C

解析 文章第一段提出“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”:“他(布什总统)认为,开发北极地区国家生物保护区的石油可以帮助减轻加利福尼亚的供电危机,还可以大大地促进国家的能源独立”。而选项A、B、D在本文中没有被提到,故选C)。
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