单选题
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 (开采权使用权费) 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 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.
单选题
What does President Bush think of tapping oil in ANWR?
【正确答案】
C
【答案解析】题目问的是布什总统对在保护区开采石油的态度，根据President Bush定位在文章第一段第二句话。紧接着后面一句谈到了布什的态度：“... help ease California's electricity crisis and provide a major boost to the country's energy independence... (……帮助缓解加州的电力危机，并且可以推动国家能源走向独立…)”，能源独立意味着对其他国家依赖降低、进口减少。
单选题
We learn from the second paragraph that the American oil industry ______.
【正确答案】
D
【答案解析】根据提干the second paragraph提示定位到文章第二段，本段第一句“The oil industry goes with the high end of the range...”意思就是说这些石油企业更愿意相信 160亿桶这个最大数(第一段末尾曾提到，根据1998年政府所做的最新查勘，那里有30亿到160亿桶原油储量)，他们认为这些石油可以供给美国六年中所需石油总量的10％。
单选题
Those against oil drilling in ANWR argue that ______.
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】题目问的是那些反对在北极野生物保护区开采石油的人的依据是什么。在文章的第三段中，根据“do virtually nothing to ease America's energy problems(对缓解美国能源问题几乎没什么作用)”可以清楚地判断出B)为正确答案。
单选题
What do the environmentalists mean by saying "Not so fast" (Line 1, Para. 3)?
【正确答案】
A
【答案解析】题目问环境保护主义者所谓的Not so fast是什么意思。显然不能只孤立地看字面意思，要根据上下文来推断。上文提到开采的好处，下文提到的是反对意见，可见是在否定在北极地区开采石油的价值，由此可以判断出事情没有这么乐观。
单选题
It can be learned from the passage that oil exploitation beneath ANWR's frozen earth ______.
【正确答案】
B
【答案解析】题目内容是“从文章中可以得出在北极野生物保护区开采石油______。”经过对文章的整体把握，第一和第二段内容表示赞成，而第三段提出反对意见，可以看出这个问题依然没有最终定论。 [名师点睛] 1．high/low end：这两个短语非常关键。这里的high end of the range中的range是“范围，幅度”的意思，因此high end(最大值)是指第一段末尾的“from 3 billion to 16 billion barrels”中的最高数目16 billion，而low end是指最低的3 billion。表明了双方对ANWR保护区石油含量的不同估计。 2．We've never had a documented case of an oil rig chasing deer out onto the pack ice：理解这句话的一个关键是a documented case，它是指有文字记载的案例。而另一个关键是 chasing deer out，意思是石油的开采把鹿驱逐到了浮冰上。它阐述的是支持者的乐观态度与看法，即认为钻探并不会给当地生态环境造成严重的影响。