The United States petroleum industry’s cost to meet environmental regu

Lol. I'm glad that the verbal bot could bring us together...?

This question is mostly about meaning -- like many of our questions of the day. A lot of the time, when something "sounds funny", it's because there's something illogical -- and that may be hard to pin down.


The timeline is really confusing on this one, and I'm struggling to figure out what, exactly, it's saying. "The U.S. petroleum industry's cost... is projected at 10% of the price per barrel of refined petroleum by the end of the decade." That last part is really messy, mostly because the "by the end of the decade" isn't anywhere near the thing that it should be modifying. It's really confusing to have "is projected" in the present tense at the beginning of the sentence... and then this whole "at the end of the decade" seems to come out of nowhere at the end. Sure, the cost will reach 10% by the end of the decade, but that meaning is pretty badly obscured here. (A) is out.


This isn't totally awful, but the verb tense is a little bit weird: wouldn't we want to talk about the cost in the future tense here? I guess we could argue that the estimation itself happens in the present, but it would still be clearer to express it using the future tense. I also don't love the fact that the word "cost" is a long way from the phrase "to meet environmental regulations", but I guess I'm splitting hairs.

To be honest, I would be conservative and keep (B) on the first pass through. But we'll see in a minute that (E) conveys the meaning just a little bit more clearly.


I don't like the use of "projected at" here. More importantly, I don't think the verb tenses make sense. "By the end of the decade... the cost is projected at..." Huh? If this is happening by the end of the decade, then the cost would need to be expressed in the future tense. (C) is out.



The placement of "by the end of the decade" suffers from the same problem as (A). And if we're being strict and literal, the meaning is really funky at the beginning of the sentence, too. "To meet environmental regulations" is modifying the subsequent clause, "the cost is estimated at 10% of the price..." This is subtle, but it basically sounds like the cost estimation itself is being conducted in order to meet environmental regulations... and that doesn't make sense. (D) is gone.


Yeah, this one is better. We finally have the costs in the future tense, and that makes much more sense than (B) (which is admittedly tempting!) or any of the others. The modifiers are in better spots, too.

So yeah: (E) probably also "sounds better" than the other answer choices. But in a perfect world, it's good to try to figure out how, exactly, the meaning gets tweaked by the crappier answer choices.

I hope this helps!