📝 IELTS paragraph rewrite 📝

Topic: "The global demand for oil and gas is increasing. Some believe that we should therefore encourage the exploitation of remote areas. Do the advantages of this outweigh the disadvantages?"

The paragraph below, written by a student, has very good key ideas, but the development is vague and repetitive (underlined). In my rewrite, I kept the key ideas, but made the development more specific.

📝 Original:

"Admittedly, exploiting pristine areas of the world for obtaining oil and gas does have two main benefits. One benefit is that it potentially saturates the oil and gas supply market, as a result of many new origins of these resources. This results in lower prices for these fossil fuels, thereby benefiting governments and their population as it improves their purchasing power. The second advantage would be that governments could enhance their supply of oil and gas for future generations. In fact, these resources are limited, meaning that our children and grandchildren might not have the privilege of using them. Only when new sources of supply are discovered, then can we be sure of meeting the oil and gas needs of our future generations."

📝 My rewrite:

"Admittedly, exploiting pristine areas of the world for obtaining oil and gas does have two main benefits. One benefit is that it potentially saturates the oil and gas supply market, thus resulting in lower prices for these fuels and preventing global shortages. This, in turn, would ensure continuing economic growth as most countries, industrial and transportation sectors in particular, are still predominantly dependent on these fuels. The second advantage would be that governments could ensure the supply of oil and gas for future generations. Since the supplies in existing locations are finite, they are bound to run out soon. While alternative fuel sources exist, they currently meet only a fraction of people's needs: renewable sources of energy, such as wind or solar power, are unreliable and nuclear power is not used widely due to safety concerns. Thus, the exploitation of new locations would leave future generations with enough fuel to prosper, while allowing them time to further develop alternative fuel sources to meet the demand."

This is not the easiest topic, I would say. Let's scratch our heads together about the disadvantages. The first one would obviously be the disruption of the environment. But what could be other disadvantages?❓