AND parallelism

[yathin.reddy]

The below sentence was given as an example in chapter 12, of the SC GMAT Strategy Guide.

"At current prices, oil in antarctic may be worth drilling for, if wells can be dug there and environmental concern addressed."

Unable to understand how parallelism is brought by using AND, because environmental is a adjective and wells is a noun.

[esledge]

At current prices, oil in Antarctica may be worth drilling for, if:

(1) wells can be dug there = noun (wells) + verb (can be dug)

and

(2) environmental concerns addressed = modified noun (environmental concerns) + verb (addressed).

The parallelism is between phrases with similar, but not identical, structure. Concerns has an adjective preceding it, while wells does not--and that's OK.

[phillip.ryder]

What is the thought on ending the phrase with a preposition? I thought it was generally incorrect to end a phrase with a preposition. The word "for" seems out of place.

[RonPurewal]

What is the thought on ending the phrase with a preposition? I thought it was generally incorrect to end a phrase with a preposition. The word "for" seems out of place.

you have a point. this sentence would probably be better rendered as
it may be worthwhile to drill for oil in the antarctic

(note that this is the special case of "it is ADJ that/for/to..." --> the one and only instance in which it's ok for the pronoun "it" not to refer to anything)

[AZ679]

As a conjunction, doesn't if need to be followed by a clause in formal writings?
For example consider this sentence: ...., if possible.
Would this be correct for GMAT?
------------------------------------------------------------
Page 233, Manhattan SC book, 5th Edition:

Right: At current prices, oil in Antarctica may be worth drilling for, if wells can be dug THERE and environmental concerns addressed.


The last part of this sentence seems a fragment to me:

[color=#4000BF]if wells can be dug there[/color]: this part is okay, if + nouns + verb + adverb

and (after this and I expect another complete clause to maintain the parallelism, but we have)

environmental concerns addressed: noun phrase + participle

We can think that the second part is actually a short form of:
[If: understood] environemntal concerns [can be: understood] addressed

But it seems as if the two parts after if are not parallel.
A way to resolve this parallelism would be to have both parts as phrases (though, this changes the meaning because 'can' is omitted) :

, if wells dug there and environmental concerns addressed

(This if + is similar to the if-structure on page 121: Water freezes if cooled to ...)

[RonPurewal]

Water freezes if cooled to...

you can only do this sort of thing ^^ with modifiers that refer to the same subject (= "water" here). so, this example does not pertain to the sentence at hand.