Reading comp PrepTest 125 · Section 1 · Question 8

Topic: Science

Paragraph 1

• Paragraph note
  • Purposes of drilling muds
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
  • List of many purposes

Paragraph 2

• Paragraph note
  • Ingredients of drilling muds
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
  • Bentonite + others
  • Largest ingredient - Barite

Paragraph 3

• Paragraph note
  • Formulas and problem
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
  • Companies have proprietary formulas
  • Problem - Studying impact since formulas are hidden, have different names for ingredients...

Paragraph 1

• Paragraph note
  • Background and concern
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
  • Background on drilling mud
  • Discharge of drilling mud - Main environmental concern
  • Regulated and monitored

Paragraph 2

• Paragraph note
  • One type of mud - WBM - Safer
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
  • Water-Based Mud (WBM) - Safer, shallow drills, dumped

Paragraph 3

• Paragraph note
  • Another type of mud - OBM - Compared to WBM - Regulations
• Views, minor Meta-Structures, points of intersection, and the author's attitude
  • Oil-Based Mud (OBM) - Deeper wells, more dangerous
  • Compared to WBM - Don’t disperse as readily, more oil, more barite
  • Barite can hurt sea creatures
  • Regulations on dumping

Main Points:

Passage A - Drilling muds have many purposes, are made up of certain chemicals, and have different formulas for different companies, which has presented problems in studying their effects.

Passage B - The release of WBMs is less harmful to the environment than OBMs, which is reflected in the stricter regulations facing the latter.

Passage A:

• Lines 2-3 - Introduce the purpose of Paragraph 1
• Lines 14-15 - Main ingredient
• Lines 23-26 - A problem is noted

Passage B:

• Lines 33-35 - A problem
• Lines 48-54 - Differences

This is a weird set of passages in that they’re both largely informative - they don’t really have an argument or a point of view. Rather, we get information about drilling muds in both. There’s some overlap - they both talk about the compositions of drilling muds - but also a lot of information that’s unique to one passage - e.g., Passage A’s discussion of the purpose of drilling muds. Since these passages are largely devoid of viewpoints, we should expect the questions to bring up the details, which means that knowing what information is present in each passage is going to be important.

Problem/Solution - Both passages bring up environmental concerns from the dumping of drilling muds. Passage A talks about the “effects of drilling waste discharges” since they have “sometimes toxic” ingredients (Lines 24-26), and Passage B talks about how OBMs have “a greater potential for negative environmental impact” (Lines 52-53). Neither offers a solution other than regulating these products - these passages aren’t about a solution to it but rather just presenting the information about the drilling muds and the problems they post.

Lists (List of Differences)- Both passages include a list. Passage A lists a bunch of purposes of drilling muds in Paragraph 1; Passage B lists differences between OBMs and WBMs in Paragraph 3.

These passages are...boring, for lack of a better word. So it’d be easy to gloss over the information. And there’s also no reason to try to remember all of the key terms, as they’re not things that are familiar to you (bentonite, barite, polymers, etc…). Instead, know what type of information shows up where in each paragraph, and move to the questions as soon as possible so you can spend more time referring back to those details.