PrepTest 125 - Section 1 - Passage 2 - Question 6

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Passage A.

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Facts about drilling muds · Function

Lubricate parts of oil well drills, clean drill parts, give info about what's happening during drilling.

Facts about drilling muds · What's in them

Barite is the largest ingredient in drilling muds.

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Facts about drilling muds · "Recipes"

Different companies have their own drilling mud "recipes." This makes it difficult to study environmental effects of drilling muds.

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Facts about drilling muds · Released during drilling phase, highly regulated and controlled

One kind of drilling mud · Water-based mud (WBM)

Used for shallow wells. Not very toxic. Dumped directly overboard.

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Another kind of drilling mud · Oil-based mud (OBM)

Used for deeper wells. More mineral oil and more barite than WBM. More environmentally damaging than WBM. Only residue of OBM can be dumped overboard.

Passage Style

A primary purpose of each ██ ███ ████████ ██ ██

Question Type

Implied

Purpose of passage

Split Approach: The primary purpose of passage A is to provide facts about the use and makeup of drilling muds. After reading passage A, eliminate any answer choices that do not capture this primary purpose.

Then, after reading passage B, eliminate any remaining answer choices that do not capture B’s primary purpose, which is to give more facts about drilling muds and explain the use and makeup of two kinds of drilling muds.

Sequential Approach: This Purpose of Passage question asks for the primary purpose of each passage. We know that the primary purpose of passage A is to provide to provide facts about the use and makeup of drilling muds, and the primary purpose of passage B is to give facts about drilling muds and explain the use and makeup of two kinds of drilling muds. Eliminate any answer choices that do not capture both of these primary purposes.

provide causal explanations ███ █ ████ ██ █████████████ █████████

Passage A does not provide causal explanations for a type of environmental pollution, so we can eliminate (A).

describe the general ███████████ ███ ██████████ ██ ████████ ████

The primary purpose of Passage A is to describe drilling muds, so (B) captures the primary purpose of Passage A.

The primary purpose of Passage B is to provide facts about drilling muds, and to describe two types of drilling muds, so (B) also captures the primary purpose of Passage B.

point out possible █████████████ ███████ ██████████ ████ ███ ████████

Passage A doesn’t mention the environmental impacts associated with oil drilling, so we can eliminate (C).

explain why oil-well ████████ ████████ ███ ███ ██ ████████ ████

Passage A does explain why drilling muds are essential in oil-well drilling.

Passage B does NOT address why oil-well drilling requires the use of drilling muds, so we can eliminate (D).

identify difficulties inherent ██ ███ ██████████ ██ ████████ ████████ ██████████

Passage A does identify difficulties in studying oil-well drilling operations, but it doesn’t mention difficulties in regulation, so we can eliminate (E).

Also, passage B indicates that the industry is tightly regulated, but it does not identify difficulties inherent in regulation.

PrepTest 125 - Section 1 - Passage 2 - Question 6

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