Directions: In the passage given below there are 10 blanks, each followed by a word given in bold. Every blank has four alternative words given in options (A),(B),(C) and (D). You have to tell which word will best suit the respective blank. Mark (E) as your answer if the work given in bold after the blank is your answer i.e “No change required”.
On the outskirts of this west Texan city, on top of one of America’s most _1_ (peep) oilfields, sit 230 square miles (600 square km) of scrubland owned by one family for more than a century. David Fasken, a Canadian lawyer, paid about $1.50 an acre ($3.70 a hectare) back in 1913, hoping to make a _2_(braggarrt) out of cattle. But the land lacked sufficient groundwater. Before he died some years later, he swore it was the worst deal he had ever done.
Today the farm, still owned by a few Fasken heirs, is valued in the billions. Oil-rich land in the Permian Basin, a 250m-year-old sea of oil _3_(solitary) 12,000 feet (3.7km) underground, has changed hands this year for an average of more than $25,000 an acre. On October 31st Occidental Petroleum (Oxy), a large American oil company, said it had paid $2bn in cash for 59,000 acres in the Permian. Amid a _4_(detest) of such deals, Bernstein, a research firm, predicts prices will go as high as $100,000 an acre. The nicknames range from “Saudi America” to “Texarabia”.
But Tommy Taylor, head of oil at Fasken Oil and Ranch, _5_(bestial) a rat. He has worked on the Permian, where oil was first _6_ (mnaaged)in the 1920s, long enough to sense its_7_(tempt) . (“In the 80s, man, this place dried up and looked like it was going to blow away.”) He cannot afford to be swept up by the _8_ (footfall)of Wall Street hype. Fasken survives on its own cashflow, which means watching the pennies on each well it drills, and every hydraulic-fracturing (fracking) crew it employs. Mr Taylor says it is hard to justify the high land prices with oil at less than $50 a barrel—especially the costly horizontal wells that run pipes for miles underground. So Wall Street’s excitement _9_(dice) him. “Our recoveries suggest it will be very difficult for wells to be _10_(hedonist) at these prices,” he says.
- A) efficient
B) rich
C) prolific
D) quirk
E) No Change Required
- A) chance
B) jejune
C) goat
D) fortune
E) No Change Required
- A) keeping up to
B) lying up to
C) pretending that
D) squibbing to
E) No Change Required
- A) flurry
B) ado
C) deprave
D) compose
E) No Change Required
- A) pukes
B) smells
C) leeks
D) rifts
E) No Change Required
- A) afflicted
B) struck
C) support
D) antagonist
E) No Change Required
- A) slow and fast
B) up and down
C) kiths and kins
D) booms and busts
E) No Change Required
- A) torture
B) effect
C) whiff
D) hinge
E) No Change Required
- A) simplifies
B) perplexes
C) bewilders
D) placates
E) No Change Required
- A) inefficient
B) myopic
C) economic
D) luxrious
E) No Change Required
i have doubt regarding 9th question
Perplex & bewilder both refers to a state in which a person is confused , so while answering why we have given priority to perplex ?
Bewilder refers to getting confused with astonishment and fear. Here there is some fear or nervousness.
“Perplexed” refers to a state of being in worry with utter confusion as to what to do in a circumstance requiring quick action
Hope it helps!
Ok mam, i got it .
Thanks for the help 🙂
ty mam:)
Good article. It is unfortunate that over the last decade, the travel industry has had to tackle terrorism, SARS, tsunamis, flu virus, swine flu, and also the first ever real global economic downturn. Through all of it the industry has proven to be robust, resilient in addition to dynamic, getting new methods to deal with difficulty. There are often fresh problems and the opportunity to which the business must once again adapt and act in response.