Q18 - In the United States proven

[wj097]

OK, I am stunned.

Amount of extractable oil same.
No new reserves found
Domestic consumption has increased

I think (E) is specifically ruled out by the first statement, in which case (D) makes more sense. Amount of oil is same, but sales increased...this makes perfect sense if the price fell (and we know that price can rise and fall regardless of the amount...regulation, cartel, etc)

Thx

[ohthatpatrick]

You're not alone in feeling like (E) is cheating upon first read. I had felt pretty confident about getting rid of the other four, though, so I was really banking on (E) being correct.

Given that this is Test 1, I was almost tempted to write this question off as a mistake on LSAC's part, because it really is confusing how (E) / the stimulus is meant to be interpreted.

I thought the paradox was:
Given that we think we can extract the same from our known oil fields now as we could ten years ago, and given that we haven't discovered any new oil fields, why has domestic oil production increased?

i.e. What makes us think we can ramp up oil extraction if we haven't found any new sources? Or why have we been forced to suck up our domestic oil reserves at a possibly reckless rate?

But I think that's not how LSAT intended us to view the paradox.

If you notice, I counted the first two ideas as one half of the paradox and the last idea as the other half.

But they've divided up the paragraph differently ... note the placement of the "yet" ... I think they want us to see it like this:

Given that we haven't discovered new oil fields over the past ten years and given that the domestic production of oil has increased over the same period, how is it possible that our oil reserves are the same today as they were ten years ago?

(E) makes a lot more sense as an answer to that question.

I think you and I were both thinking in terms of "rate of extraction," not "total capacity of oil."

If we think in terms of "total capacity of oil," it makes more sense. Let's say 10 years ago, the US surveyed its oil fields and found they had an oil bank account of 20 billion barrels. There aren't any deposits going into that account, only withdrawals.

So if we haven't discovered any new fields and we've increased domestic production of oil, then our current oil bank account should be less than 20 billion barrels, not the same.

(E) is explaining how it could be the same, despite the fact that we haven't found any new fields. The existing fields turn out to have more extractable oil than we previously thought.

=== other answers ===

(A) Importing more foreign oil doesn't explain why we still have the same amount of domestic oil.

(B) Conservation would only explain how we're depleting our oil bank account more slowly, not how the bank account still shows the original balance from ten years ago.

(C) This only helps explain why we haven't found any new fields, but that's not the central tension of the paradox.

(D) This only helps explain why people might be consuming domestic oil more (it's cheaper), but that's not the central tension of the paradox.

Hope this helps.

#officialexplanation

[agersh144]

I don't understand how C cannot be correct. If the oil has just been sitting in the ground due to EPA regulations for the last 10 years then of course the amount will be the same we've been importing it the whole time. Moreover, this explains why no new fields of consequence have been discovered because exploration is a no-no due to increased concern over the environmental impact of such exploration. It solves both sides of the paradox why the same oil? Because its getting imported rather than domestically harvested. Why no new discoveries? Because oil exploration due to environmental concerns has halted it.

[ohthatpatrick]

That's a good argument for (C), but you keep failing to mention the 3rd fact, which is what contradicts your story.

Consumption of DOMESTIC produced oil has increased.

It's impossible to say, "We started only IMPORTING oil, that's why our domestic reserves are the same". That last fact in the stimulus contradicts that. We may ALSO be importing oil, but we're definitely using up some of our domestic reserves.

Let me know if you don't see why your story is impossible given that 3rd fact.

[jones.mchandler]

This question is ridiculously paradoxical.

1) proven domestic oil reserves are same now as ten years ago
2) no new oil fields have been discovered over this time
3) consumption of domestically produced oil HAS increased

A, B, C are quickly eliminated.

Leave D--sounds plausible.

E- seems like it can be eliminated because it only raises the possibility that more oil can be extracted from the same fields. This answer choice does not say that the oil HAS been extracted.

Now, just because the price of domestically produced oil falls does not mean that demand will rise. But since the price HAS fallen, it seems more likely to resolve the paradox then simply possibility of increased extraction.

Why is answer choice E better at resolving the paradox?

[ohthatpatrick]

I'm not sure from your recounting of the facts where you think the paradox is.

It seems like you're liking (D) because a falling price of oil would help explain why consumption has gone up.

That's true, but all (D) does is explain that 3rd fact. How does it reconcile the paradox? What IS the paradox? Our job in this question is not to explain why consumption has increased.

As I said in the previous post, make sure you always lean on the placement of the "but/yet/however/nonetheless".

The question wants us to reconcile the truth of #1 with the collective truth of #2 and 3.

Make sure you understand the tension between the statements (sometimes it's helpful to ask yourself, "What WOULD we have expected otherwise?")

If I told you that
a. over the past 10 yrs, we haven't discovered any new oil fields
and
b. over the past 10 yrs, we've been using more and more of our domestic oil

then you SHOULD expect that we have depleted some of our oil savings. You should expect that our supply of domestic oil has gone down.

If you don't get why, take a few seconds to try to make sense of why those two facts lead to that last idea.

The first sentence, paradoxically, tells us that our supply of domestic oil is actually the same.

Whaaa? How is our supply the same, when we've been consuming our oil but we haven't discovered any new oil fields?

Does (D) help answer that question?

Can we say, our supply is the same because the price of oil went down?

No, that doesn't make any sense.

Does (E) help answer that question?

Can we say, our supply is the same because we can now reach more oil in the existing fields then we could 10 years ago.

Yes, that makes sense.

To put some arbitrary numbers to it,

10 yrs ago - our oil supply was 20 million barrels.

Over the past 10 yrs, we've consumed 5 million.

You would think our supply would now be 15 million barrels. But the first sentence is telling us that our supply is still 20 million barrels.

What (E) is saying is that our current technology allows us to harvest an extra 5 million barrels out of our existing fields (if we had had this technology 10 yrs ago, we would have considered our oil supply 25 million barrels at that point). Thus, even though we've used up 5 million barrels over the past 10 years, our supply is still at 20.

You seemed troubled with (E) by the fact that it was only discussing what CAN be extracted, not what HAS been extracted.

Well, we're trying to explain the paradoxical first sentence. Is the first sentence about what CAN be extracted or about what HAS been extracted?

It's about what CAN be extracted -- "the amount of oil considered extractable"

So the language of (E) is a perfect match for the statistic in the first sentence.

Hope this helps.