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

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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 st 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 in1998, 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(意久之财)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 in significant. "We’ ve never had a documented case of an oil rig chasing deer out onto the pack ice," say Alaska State Representative Scott Ogan.
    Not so fast, say environmentalists. Sticking to the low end of government estimates the National Re sources Defends 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 mush bargaining over leases, environmental permits and regulatory review. As for AN WR’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.
It can be learned from the passage that oil exploitation beneath ANWR’ s frozen earth ______.

选项 A、involves a lot of technological problems
B、remains a controversial issue
C、is expected to get under way soon
D、will enable the U.S. to be oil independent

答案B

解析 通过全文可知,关于在ANWR中勘探开采石油存在两种观点,一是倡导者的支持,一是环保者的反对,因此这是一个有争议的问题。B项正确。
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