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.外語學習網(wǎng)

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.

2. 漢譯英的第一篇節(jié)選自《胡錦濤在金磚國家領(lǐng)導人第三次會晤時的講話》（2011年4月15日）