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

Question

The United States petroleum industry’s cost to meet environmental regulations is projected at ten percent of the price per barrel of refined petroleum by the end of the decade .

(A) The United States petroleum industry’s cost to meet environmental regulations is projected at ten percent of the price per barrel of refined petroleum by the end of the decade.

(B) The United States petroleum industry’s cost by the end of the decade to meet environmental regulations is estimated at ten percent of the price per barrel of refined petroleum.

(C) By the end of the decade, the United States petroleum industry’s cost of meeting environmental regulations is projected at ten percent of the price per barrel of refined petroleum.

(D) To meet environmental regulations, the cost to the United States petroleum industry is estimated at ten percent of the price per barrel of refined petroleum by the end of the decade.

(E) It is estimated that by the end of the decade the cost to the United States petroleum industry of meeting environmental regulations will be ten percent of the price per barrel of refined petroleum.

GMATNinja · Accepted Answer

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

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!

skovinsky · Answer

Hi!

I quickly arrived at (E) because of the improperly used idioms "projected at" and "estimated at" - in both cases, "to be" should be used instead of "at".

Since A, B, C and D all have "at", and E has "is estimated that...   will be", which is also fine, that's the choice that immediately jumped out at me.

"The cost to X of Y is Z" is an acceptable phrase.

mymba99 · Answer

E for me.
Assuming there is an apostrophe (industry's)
A,B,C - The United States petroleum industry 's cost  
  industry's cost  incorrectly implies that it is the cost  of  the industry. But it is cost  to  the industry.
D has a misplaced modifier problem.
E is fine. ( Though I have mixed feelings about the  Cost to .... industry of meeting  ) {industry of meeting??}

gmat1011 · Answer

Why is "estimated at" unidiomatic? Its used all the time!? I mean surely the GMAT can't have a problem with "estimated at" or "projected at"? Is "estimated/projected at" grammatically wrong?

The direct economic value the Internet provides to the rest of the U.S. economy is estimated at $175 billion. https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6268.html

Thanks.

skovinsky · Answer

Hi,

when you're talking about the present, "estimated at" is fine; when you're projecting to the future, "estimated to be" (or, even better, changing the sentence to use the future "will be") is correct.

For idioms, it's all about what the GMAT considers correct - that's the "fun" thing about idioms, there are no rules, it's just what "is" correct.

tirupatibalaji · Answer

its quiet straight forward question. as petroleum industry has to meet the regulation but not the industry's cost. hence the answer E is correct. pls correct me if i am wrong.

tonebeeze · Answer

After further review, you can certainly arrive at the answer in under 60 seconds: 
(1) If you identify the improper idioms "estimated at" & "projected at"

(2) You have a firm grasp of the concept of possessives. Possessive cases (- ‘s) is used only with the names of living things.

We don't say: 
Table's legs... 
Industry's cost...

We say: 
Legs of the table...
Cost to the industry...

skovinsky · Answer

Actually, it's perfectly OK to use possessives with inanimate objects (or even intangibles).

"The table's legs are uneven", "the industry's costs are high this year" and "the plan's advantages are clear" are all well constructed sentences.

daagh · Answer

When GMAC’s psychometrician remarked about removing the idioms from the database, he must have certainly meant including this one. However, I got interested in this because the title said it is a tough modifier problem. Which modifier?

aalba005 · Answer

E for me.

(A) The United States petroleum industry’s cost to meet environmental regulations is projected at ten percent of the price per barrel of refined petroleum  by the end of the decade .
(B) The United States petroleum industry’s cost  by the end of the decade to meet environmental regulations  is estimated at ten percent of the price per barrel of refined petroleum.
(C) By the end of the decade, the United States petroleum industry’s cost of meeting environmental regulations is  projected at  ten percent of the price per barrel of refined petroleum.========
(D) To meet environmental regulations, the cost to the United States petroleum industry is estimated at ten percent of the price per barrel of refined petroleum  by the end of the decade. 
(E) It is estimated that by the end of the decade the cost to the United States petroleum industry of meeting environmental regulations will be ten percent of the price per barrel of refined petroleum.

I think for A and B the "end of the decade" is poorly positioned and does not clearly link to the objective. 
C I believe is an incorrect idiom, D same as A.

E sounded most fluid.

More experienced sentence correction peeps can chime in with better reasons why A-D wont work.

GMATNinja · Answer

Seeing a fresh request for an expert reply here... but Verbal Bot is the only one who has posted in the past 5 years, and I don't think that Mr. or Ms. Bot made the request. If you have a specific question, please let us know! Otherwise, please refer to some of the excellent explanations above.

akshayk · Answer

I think the Verbal Bot had an intuition that I'd have a query on this question.

Q1) What is this question testing?
The only thing I could point to during my quick scan is 'by the end of the decade' is moving around implying whatever this prepositional phrase is modifying should make sense.

Q2) How can we eliminate answer choices in this Q?
I got the right answer - E - by using my ear => eliminating bad sounding answer choices, and I do not want to rely on my ear as I know how GMAC plays with people's ear to get you to choose the wrong answer.

Thanks Ninja Man.

DukeWong · Answer

I think it's  petroleum industry  to  meet environmental regulations

not the  cost  to  meet environmental regulations

vanam52923 · Answer

daagh 
i read somwhere in your post that for estimations we donot use will , may ,could etc is better so how is E correct here ?

daagh · Answer

Vanam wrote 
 
Did I say estimation togther with ' will ' are wrong? I might have only said that estimation along with 'could' or 'may" will be better. If in case, we do not have such a choice, as in this example, what do we do? 
That is the reason one must not read in between the line out of context.

CareerGeek · Answer

Hi  daagh ,

Can you pls explain the options ?

Regards

Posted from my mobile device

daagh · Answer

Dillesh, is there any need to explain the choices? Choices A through D are merrily using bad idioms such as "estimated at" and projected at". One cannot predict, project, or estimate a future quantum with a precise "at". They can only be approximations. That is the reason I would reject those choices wholesale, and go for E in the hall.

If you want to delve deeper, you might say that A and E are wrong for placing the phrase 'by the end of the decade' away from the cost, which the phrase is supposed to modify. C is also wrong in giving a dubious meaning that the entire projection will be done at the end of the decade rather than now. B is ok except for the idiomatic goof-up but would settle for E as the best of the lot. 
 
The danger in the latter approach is that one might go wrong more often than not, if one is under time pressure, and thus drag down other questions too.

This is my straight opinion about this question.

Avysar · Answer

This sentence has idiom error, tense error and misplaced modifier..
A is incorrect because it has ' projected at' and ' by the end of the decade ' is misplaced
B is incorrect as it says ' by the end of the decade to meet...' which is awkward. Also, estimated at is incorrect...not idiomatic
C is incorrect because' projected at' is incorrect..
D is incorrect as ' refined petroleum by the end of the decade' sounds awkward...by the end of the decade is misplaced here
E is perfect as it says ' estimated that....it will be' indicating correctly that it is a projection for future...perfect construction

Posted from my mobile device

peanuts · Answer

The United States petroleum industry’s cost to meet environmental regulations is projected at ten percent of the price per barrel of refined petroleum by the end of the decade .

Meaning: by the end of the decade, the cost to the US petro industry of meeting regulation is estimated at 10 percent of the price per barrel of refined petro. The correct structure is cost to somebody of doing something

(A) The United States petroleum industry’s cost to meet environmental regulations is projected at ten percent of the price per barrel of refined petroleum by the end of the decade.  Wrong in meaning. Cost to US petro, not US petro's cost

(B) The United States petroleum industry’s cost by the end of the decade to meet environmental regulations is estimated at ten percent of the price per barrel of refined petroleum.  Wrong in meaning. Cost to US petro, not US petro's cost

(C) By the end of the decade, the United States petroleum industry’s cost of meeting environmental regulations is projected at ten percent of the price per barrel of refined petroleum.  Wrong in meaning. Cost to US petro, not US petro's cost

(D) To meet environmental regulations, the cost to the United States petroleum industry is estimated at ten percent of the price per barrel of refined petroleum by the end of the decade.  "refined petro by the end of the decade" makes no sense. By the end of the decade should modify the whole clause, not only refined petroleum

(E) It is estimated that by the end of the decade the cost to the United States petroleum industry of meeting environmental regulations will be ten percent of the price per barrel of refined petroleum.  Good. Meaning is OK. Structure of cost is ok

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

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

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