4. True or false?

1. Exploring and drilling for oil may disturb land and ocean habitats. New technologies have greatly reduced the num­ber and size of areas disturbed by drilling, sometimes called “footprints”.

2. Satellites, global positioning systems, remote sensing devices, and 3-D and 4-D seismic technologies make it possible to discover oil reserves while drilling fewer wells. Plus, the use of horizontal and directional drilling makes it possible for a single well to produce oil from much bigger areas.

3. When a leak in a storage tank or pipeline occurs, petro- leum products can also get into the ground, and the ground must be cleaned up. To prevent leaks from underground stora- ge tanks, all buried tanks are supposed to be replaced by tanks with a double-lining.

4. The most serious ecological and environmental impacts of oil exploration, drilling, and production occur in aquatic habitats.

5. Exploration, drilling, and production on land each re- quire roads and often pipeline corridors.

6. Noise and dust are associated with the movement of ve- hicles.

4. Fill in the gaps with the words given below.

Environment, release, oil, organisms, conditions, biota,

operations, spilled, surface, bottom (2), composition, aquatic, coating, petroleum (2)

Impacts on biota

Oil released to the aquatic will produce a variety

of impacts depending on quantity, chemical

time, and duration of , location, weather ,

and cleanup . Oil will either float

on the or settle to the if adsorbed

on sediment. The impact of an discharge will be

greatest on the at or near the surface and on the

benthic organisms at the . Oil can cause death to

biota by some or all of the following mechanisms:

(1) , and asphyxiation; (2) poisoning through

ingestion of toxic compounds; (3) poiso- ning from exposure to toxic water-soluble compounds;

(4) disruption of body insulation and loss of buoyancy. The

impact of these mechanisms on is usually more

acute in juvenile forms than in adults.

4. Make up sentences and put them into negative form.

1. Offshore/marine/the surrounding/extraction/of oil/

disturbs/environment.

2. is/Oil/extraction/and environmentally/costly/damaging.

3. have already/Smaller/impact/a great/spills/proven/to have/on ecosystems.

4. at sea/Oil spills/much more/on land/are generally/ damaging/than /those.

5. can kill/Coating/organisms/of oil/all alive/it coats.

6. and drilling/may/land and ocean/habitats/Exploring/ for oil/disturb.

4. Put in the correct verb form.

Oil well fires can (to cause) the loss of mil-

lions of barrels of crude oil per day. Combined with the eco- logical problems (to cause) by the large

amounts of smoke and unburnt petroleum falling back to

earth, oil well fires such as those (to see) in Kuwait can

cause enormous economic losses.

Smoke from burnt crude oil ftp contain)

many chemicals, including sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, soot, benzopyrene, Polyaromatic hydrocarbons, and dioxins. Exposure to oil well fires _r fto cite) as a cause of the

Gulf War Syndrome; however, studies_ (to indicate)

that the firefighters who (to cap) the wells (to

report, not) any of the symptoms suffered by the soldiers.