Heating-Oil Prices are Expected to be Higher this Year than Last Because Refiners are Paying About $5 a Barrel more for Crude Oil than they were Last Year.

Question: Heating-oil prices are expected to be higher this year than last because refiners are paying about $5 a barrel more for crude oil than they were last year.

1. Heating-oil prices are expected to be higher this year than last because refiners are paying about $5 a barrel more for crude oil than they were last year
2. Heating-oil prices are expected to rise higher this year over last because refiners pay about $5 a barrel more for crude oil more than they did
3. Expectations are for heating-oil prices to be higher this year than last year’s because refiners are paying about $5 a barrel more for crude oil more than they did
4. It is the expectation that heating-oil prices will be higher this year over last because refiners are paying about $5 a barrel more for crude oil now than what they were
5. It is expected that heating-oil prices will rise higher this year than last year’s because refiners pay about $5 a barrel more for crude oil more than they did

“Heating-oil prices are expected to be higher this year than last because refiners are paying about $5 a barrel more for crude oil than they were last year.”- is a GMAT sentence correction question. This particular GMAT sentence correction topic has been taken from the book ‘The Official Guide of GMAT Verbal Review, 2nd Edition, 2009’. This question checks Parallelism, Comparison of two elements and Modifiers. GMAT Sentence Correction questions comprise 11-16 questions to be completed within 65 minutes. Each Sentence Correction question contains a sentence with an underlined portion that includes 0-2 errors.

Answer: A
Explanation: Following are some concepts used in the sentence:

1. Meaning
2. Parallelism
3. Verb
4. Tense

Option A: Correct
This option is correct because it uses the correct phrase “than they were”, which conveys the intended meaning that heating-oil prices are expected to be higher this year than last because refiners are paying more for crude oil than they were last year. The verb form “they” could create some confusion but it is being used in the context of the prices of heating oil. So, Option A is correct.

Option B: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because the phrase used in the sentence “rise higher” seems awkward and redundant. Also, the use of the words “higher over” is incorrect, in place of these, we can use words like “higher than”. Since this option uses a lot of redundant phrases, Option B is incorrect.

Option C: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because the comparison in this option seems awkward. It would be more sensible to say, Expectations are for heating-oil prices to be higher this year than last year”. Also, the noun “expectations” is not as preferred as the verb “expected”. So, Option C is incorrect.

Option D: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because the phrase used in this option “higher this year over last year” seems awkward. You could say “prices are expected to be higher this year than last year”, it sounds more organised and less redundant. So, Option D is incorrect.

Option E: Incorrect
This option is incorrect because “it is expected” does not sound good when we have better options like “prices are expected to be higher”. Also, it does not make any sense to say that “prices will rise higher”, you could simply say “prices will rise” or “prices will be higher”. So, Option E is incorrect.

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