In May, the Argentine oil company YPF announced that it had found 150 million barrels of oil in the Patagonian field, and President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner rushed onto national television to praise the discovery as something that could give new impetus to the country’s long-stagnant economy.
“The importance of this discovery goes well beyond the volume,” said Sebastián Eskenazi, YPF’s chief executive, as he announced the find. “The important thing is it is something new: new energy, a new future, new expectations.”
Although there are significant hurdles, geologists say that the Vaca Muerta is a harbinger of a possible major expansion of global petroleum supplies over the next two decades as the industry uses advanced techniques to extract oil from shale and other tightly packed rocks.
Oil experts caution that geologists have only just begun to study shale fields in much of the world, and thus can only guess at their potential. Little seismic work has been completed, and core samples need to be retrieved from thousands of feet below the surface to judge how much oil or gas can be retrieved.
Argentina certainly has high hopes for shale oil from the southern Patagonian province of Neuquén. The 150 million barrels of recoverable shale oil found in the Vaca Muerta represents an increase of 8 percent in Argentina’s reserves, and the find was the biggest discovery of oil in the country since the late 1980s.
Oil experts say the Vaca Muerta is probably just a start for Argentina, long a middle-ranked oil producer. Mr. Lynch noted that YPF had explored only 100 square miles out of 5,000 square miles in the whole shale deposit, and other oil companies working in the area had not announced any discoveries yet.
So far, nearly all of the oil exploration in the shale fields in Argentina and elsewhere has been pursued with traditional vertical wells. Plans are just beginning for horizontal drilling.
Some experts caution that the fast advance of oil production from shale in the United States is no guarantee of similar successes abroad, at least not in the near future.
Section 2 Chinese-English Translation(汉译英)(50 points)
Translate the following two passages into Chinese.
Passage 1
和平稳定是发展的前提和基础。上个世纪,人类经历了两次世界大战,生灵涂炭,经济社会发展遭受严重挫折。第二次世界大战结束以来,世界经济能够快速增长,主要得益于相对和平稳定的国际环境。
我们应该恪守联合国宪章宗旨和原则,充分发挥联合国及其安理会在维护和平、缔造和平、建设和平方面的核心作用。坚持通过对话和协商,以和平方式解决国际争端。
我们应该坚持国家不论大小、强弱、贫富都是国际社会平等一员,以民主、包容、合作、共赢的精神实现共同安全,做到一国内部的事情一国自主办、大家共同的事情大家商量办,坚定不移奉行多边主义和国际合作,推进国际关系民主化。
我们应该营造支持各国根据本国国情实现和平、稳定、繁荣的国际环境。应该本着求同存异的原则,尊重各国主权和选择发展道路和发展模式的权利,尊重文明多样性,在交流互鉴、取长补短中相得益彰、共同进步。