【英语时差8,16】油和水

Don: Time to go again to the A Moment of Science mailbag. A listener writes:

     Dear Don & Yaël, 

     I read somewhere that there's more oil in the Western part of the United States and Canada than in Saudi Arabia. Is that true?

Yaël: Great question! And the answer is: yes, sort of. The western region of North America, stretching from Mexico through northern Canada, is known as the Western      Energy Corridor. And it does indeed contain more oil than Saudi Arabia--about three times more!

D: But there's a catch: the oil is in the form of oil shale¹--a type of rock that contains oil- ike substances. Unlike conventional oil that spurts² from the ground in liquid form, oil shale has to be mined and then heated to turn it into useable petroleum³.

Y: And another catch is that mining oil shale and heating it uses water--lots of water. Infact, harvesting any substantial amount of oil from oil shale would take around five-percent of the total water in the upper Colorado basin. The American West is pretty dry, so right now there's not enough water there to get oil from oil shale and have enough water for people, plants, and animals to live.

D: Another way of putting it is that getting oil from oil shale is very expensive, both in dollars and in natural resources. But that doesn't mean it's not worth trying. Oil shale deposits in parts of Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming could yield more than eight-hundred million barrels of oil.

Y: Right now, oil shale doesn't provide much of the oil we use. But as mining technology develops and conventional oil resources decline, oil shale could play an important      role in the future.  

 

1 shale   

n.页岩，泥板岩

参考例句：

• We can extract oil from shale.我们可以从页岩中提取石油。
• Most of the rock in this mountain is shale.这座山上大部分的岩石都是页岩。

2 spurts   

短暂而突然的活动或努力( spurt的名词复数 )； 突然奋起

参考例句：

• Great spurts of gas shoot out of the sun. 太阳气体射出形成大爆发。
• Spurts of warm rain blew fitfully against their faces. 阵阵温热的雨点拍打在他们脸上。

3 petroleum   

n.原油，石油

参考例句：

• The Government of Iran advanced the price of petroleum last week.上星期伊朗政府提高了石油价格。
• The purpose of oil refinery is to refine crude petroleum.炼油厂的主要工作是提炼原油。