Petrochemical industry officials have said that the extreme pressure

Petrochemical industry officials have said that the extreme pressure exerted on plant managers during the last five years to improve profits by cutting costs has done nothing to impair the industry’s ability to operate safely.

According to Petro people, X has had no negative impact on Y

X: the extreme pressure exerted on plant managers during the last five years to improve profits by cutting costs

Y: the industry’s ability to operate safely

In other words, Petro people say that this extreme pressure on plant managers has not decreased the operational safety of the petrochemical industry. (The pressure has been exerted to improve profits by cutting costs.)

However, environmentalists contend that the recent rash of serious oil spills and accidents at petrochemical plants is traceable to cost-cutting measures.

We have a contrast here. Environmentalists don’t agree with Petro people.

Environmentalists say that the recent spate of oil spills and accidents at petrochemical plants is due to cost-cutting measures.

X is a cost-cutting measure.

Z: the recent spate of oil spills and accidents at petrochemical plants

Environmentalists say that X has led to Z. (Z, logically, indicates a negative impact on Y.)





We are looking for support for the position held by industry officials.

What is their position?

X has had no negative impact on Y

X: the extreme pressure exerted on plant managers during the last five years to improve profits by cutting costs

Y: the industry’s ability to operate safely

Thus, we need to support that this extreme pressure on plant managers has not decreased the operational safety of the petrochemical industry.

One way we can support this is by saying that the recent spate of oil spills and accidents at petrochemical plants is due to some external factor and not due to cost-cutting measures.





(A) The petrochemical industry benefits if accidents do not occur, since accidents involve risk of employee injury as well as loss of equipment and product.

Incorrect.Some people find this option correct since, per them, this option goes against environmentalists’ contention. Per them, given option A, the cost-cutting measures cannot lead to a lack of safety since the petrochemical industry benefits from the safety. However, this logic is flawed.

Let’s take an analogy to understand why this logic is flawed.

Suppose I state that your irregular eating habits have caused your bad health.

Can you weaken my statement by saying that you’re benefited if you have good health?

No.

Why?

Even though you benefit from good health, we know that you don’t have good health, and we are now trying to figure out the cause of your bad health.

You cannot rule out a potential cause of bad health (irregular eating habits) by saying that you never wanted bad health.

Does this make sense?

(Even if this doesn’t, I have to move on!! )

Similarly, option A doesn’t weaken the environmentalists’ contention and doesn’t support the Petro people’s position.

(B) Petrochemical industry unions recently demanded that additional money be spent on safety and environment protection measures, but the unions readily abandoned those demands in exchange for job security.

Incorrect. This option says that these unions demanded safety and later abandoned demanding it. However, the option doesn’t indicate whether X has had an impact on Y or not.

(X: the extreme pressure exerted on plant managers during the last five years to improve profits by cutting costs

Y: the industry’s ability to operate safely)

Thus, this option has no impact on Petro people’s position.

(C) Despite major cutbacks in most other areas of operation, the petrochemical industry has devoted more of its resources to environmental and safety measures in the last five years than in the preceding five years.

Correct. This option indicates that the cost-cutting measures have not decreased spending on environmental and safety measures. Essentially, the cost-cutting happened in other areas of operation but not on safety-related aspects.

In such a case, there is no reason to argue that the industry’s ability to operate safely has decreased because of the cost-cutting measures.

Thus, Petro people’s (industry official’s) position is strengthened.

(Please note that this option directly challenges the statement made by the environmentalists - they were saying that the recent accidents are traceable to the cost-cutting measures; this option says that such a thing is not possible since no cost-cutting happened on the safety-related measures.)

(D) There is evidence that the most damaging of the recent oil spills would have been prevented had cost-cutting measures not been instituted.

Incorrect. Do you realize that this option is weakening the Petro people’s position?

I believe people who mark this option don’t realize that it is doing the exact opposite of what we want.

Trust me, doing so (marking an option that is doing exactly the opposite of what the question is asking) is quite common. Thus, before marking an option, I always ensure that the option is NOT doing the opposite of what the question is asking.

(E) Both the large fines and adverse publicity generated by the most recent oil spills have prompted the petrochemical industry to increase the resources devoted to oil-spill prevention.

Incorrect. The option says that the petrochemical industry is now devoting more resources to oil-spill prevention because of large fines and adverse publicity

Can this be used to argue that the industry believed that they can do more to increase the safety?

Yes.

Can this be used to argue that the industry’s cost-cutting measures lead to oil spills?

I don’t think so.

Even if the cost-cutting measures did not lead to any oil spills, the large fines and adverse publicity can still very much lead them to spend more resources on oil-spill prevention.

This option, thus, has NO impact the Petro people’s position.

Question is asking us to support industry official.

Industry official is claiming that cost cutting has no role in reducing the safety at work (or the recent oil spill)


A) The petrochemical industry benefits if accidents do not occur, since accidents involve risk of employee injury as well as loss of equipment and product. In general its good, but it is not mentioning anything about cost cutting
B) Petrochemical industry unions recently demanded that additional money be spent on safety and environment protection measures, nut the unions readily abandoned those demands in exchange for job security. abandoning the union's request has nothing to do with weather cost cutting leads to safety reduction.
C) Despite major cutbacks in most other areas of operation, the petrochemical industry has devoted more of its resources to environmental and safety measures in the last five years than in the preceding five years. This supports the claim of industry official as despite of cutting the cost, it was in fact improved.
D) There is evidence that the most damaging of the recent oil spills would have been prevented had cost-cutting measures not been instituted. weakens the officials statement by showing that cost cutting was reason of oil spill
E) Both the large fines and adverse publicity generated by the most recent oil spills have prompted the petrochemical industry to increase the resources devoted to oil-spill prevention. Cost cutting is not talked about

C) Despite major cutbacks in most other areas of operation, the petrochemical industry has devoted more of its resources to environmental and safety measures in the last five years than in the preceding five years.

Take a folloing case :-
preceding five years.
# of safety incidents 1000

Last Five years
#of safety incidents 100

it may be the case that, more resources have been devoted towards reducing the overall # of safety incidents. however it could still be that the 100 incidents are because of pressure for increasing the profits. Had the pressure not been there, there would have been very few accident (<5 accidents for example)
How can this scenario strengthen Petro executive's claim that the extreme pressure has done nothing to impair the industry's ability to operate safely?

I rejected this choice coz its comparing the last five years with previous five years
......safety measures in the last five years than the preceding five years.

Still don't get it. Can someone please explain this ?

We need to support Petrochemical industry officials (people who work in oil industry).

People from oil industry say that even though they cut expenses, this fact did not reduce the safety of operations.
Environmentalists blame oil industry officials and say that cost cutting actually did reduce the safety and brought more accidents.

Well, the situation is simple: first kid says "My actions did not cause anything bad", and his friend says "yeah man, you actually did bad stuff because there is some evidence!" How can we support the first kid?

We need to find something that shows that expense cutting did not cause incidents and reduce safety.



This option says that accidents are bad for oil industry. The oil industry benefits when there are no accidents. This could work, let's keep this option.



If anything, this option would actually weaken oil industry officials' statement. This option says that cost cutting effects negatively affected safety, and some extra funds are needed to improve safety & job security.



In simple terms, this option says that yeah, oil industry cut a lot of costs, but those costs were cut in areas that do not touch safety and environment. In fact, some extra funds were pumped into safety and environment! This option is definitely better than option (A).



This option weakens the argument big time. Paraphrased, the option says that well, cost-cutting measures lead to oil spills. Nasty stuff! No one like oil spills, especially environmentalists. This option supports the environmentalists 100%.



This option is not very relevant to our argument because it talks about fines and publicity, which triggered oil industry people to do stuff. If anything, this option goes against the oil industry folks.

In last 5 years, costs have been cut to improve profits.
Petrochemical official says that this has not impaired ability to operate safely.
Environmentalists say that recent accidents are traceable to cost cutting.

We need to strengthen the official's claim.

(A) The petrochemical industry benefits if accidents do not occur, since accidents involve risk of employee injury as well as loss of equipment and product.

Irrelevant. We need to focus on impact of cost cutting, not on impact of accidents. No-accidents may benefit the industry but this doesn't say that cost cutting did not lead to accidents. In any case, the intention of the management is irrelevant. We can only focus on what actually happened.

(B) Petrochemical industry unions recently demanded that additional money be spent on safety and environment protection measures, but the unions readily abandoned those demands in exchange for job security.

Union's role is irrelevant.

(C) Despite major cutbacks in most other areas of operation, the petrochemical industry has devoted more of its resources to environmental and safety measures in the last five years than in the preceding five years.

This says that the industry is actually putting in more money toward safety. So despite the cost cutting, the safety aspect should not be impaired. This supports the official's claim.

(D) There is evidence that the most damaging of the recent oil spills would have been prevented had cost-cutting measures not been instituted.

This helps the environmentalists.

(E) Both the large fines and adverse publicity generated by the most recent oil spills have prompted the petrochemical industry to increase the resources devoted to oil-spill prevention.

What happened in the last 5 years is our concern, not what they will do now.

Answer (C)

Is the option E incorrect only because it mentions the most recent oil spill? In any case, the industry has increased the resources devoted to oil-spill prevention so doesn't that support the position of industry officials?

In this question we're looking for the answer choice that best supports the Officials' position that:

the extreme pressure exerted on plant managers during the last five years to improve profits by cutting costs has done nothing to impair the industry’s ability to operate safely

For (E) to be the correct answer, it need to help us explain how cost cutting has not prevented the industry operating safely, despite the extreme pressure to cut costs.

(E) tells us:

The passage told us the officials believe that the cost cutting measures put in place over the past five years have not affected the industry's ability to operate safely. (E) tells us the industry has increased the resources devoted to oil-spill prevention after the recent oil spills.

From this, we can say the industry is worried it was not devoting enough resources to oil-spill prevention before the accident. In turn, (E) implies the industry could not operate safely with all the cost cutting measures and the environmentalists were right.

Since this weakens the officials' position, (E) cannot be the correct answer to this question.

Compare (E) to (C):

(C) tells us that major cutbacks have occurred BUT the amount of resources dedicated to environmental and safety measures has increased in the last five years.

This suggests that it is not the cost cutting measures that have caused the recent accidents because the industry is dedicating additional resources to make their facilities safer. Something else must be responsible for these accidents.

(C) provides evidence that helps support the officials' position -- (C) is the answer to this question.

I hope that helps!

OA solution

Step 1: Identify the Question

The phrasing provide the strongest support for the position in the question stem indicates that this is a Strengthen the Argument question.

Step 2: Deconstruct the Argument

PI officials: cost cutting in last 5 yrs → no harm to safety

Enviro.: cost cutting → recent spills & accidents

Two groups disagree on the outcome of cost cutting measures at petrochemical plants. One group believes that safety has not been affected. The other group believes that cost cutting measures have caused serious oil spills and accidents.

Step 3: Pause and State the Goal

The question asks you to provide support for the position held by industry officials. The right answer will support the conclusion that cost-cutting during the last five years has not hurt safety.

Step 4: Work from Wrong to Right

(A) This answer implies that the petrochemical industry has an incentive to avoid accidents. However, it does not clarify whether there is a relationship between cost-cutting measures and accidents. The petrochemical industry might want to avoid accidents, but be unable to do so, because there simply isn’t enough funding.

(B) This answer could imply that the industry unions believed that safety issues were due to cost-cutting because they demanded additional funding. It could also imply that the unions don’t hold that belief, since they readily abandoned their demands for funding. Without knowing exactly what the unions’ beliefs were, and without knowing whether the unions’ beliefs were correct, this answer does not support either the industry officials or the environmentalists.

(C) CORRECT. According to this answer choice, cost-cutting actually hasn’t led to cutbacks in environmental and safety measures. In fact, more resources are being used on these measures now than were used prior to the cost-cutting. So, the safety issues during the last five years cannot be blamed on inadequate safety funding: if inadequate funding was the cause, then you would also expect to see similar safety issues prior to the cost-cutting era, when funding for safety was even lower.

(D) This answer provides evidence that cost-cutting and safety issues are related; thus, it supports the environmentalists’ position, not the industry officials’ position.

(E) The industry officials’ claim is about the cause of the accidents. This answer choice deals with a result of the accident (increased oil-spill prevention resources), which could have occurred regardless of the accident’s cause.

To provide the strongest support for the position held by industry officials, we need to find an option that refutes the claim made by environmentalists that cost-cutting measures have led to the recent oil spills and accidents. Among the options provided, the one that provides the strongest support for the position held by industry officials is:

(C) Despite major cutbacks in most other areas of operation, the petrochemical industry has devoted more of its resources to environmental and safety measures in the last five years than in the preceding five years.

This option supports the position of industry officials by stating that despite cost-cutting measures in other areas of operation, the petrochemical industry has actually increased its allocation of resources to environmental and safety measures in the last five years. This suggests that the industry recognizes the importance of safety and environmental protection and has taken steps to improve in these areas. The increase in resources dedicated to safety measures contradicts the claim that cost-cutting has compromised the industry's ability to operate safely.