Critical Reasoning

Petrochemical industry officials have said that the extreme pressure exerted on plant managers during the last five years to improve profits by cutting costs has done nothing to impair the industry's ability to operate safely. However, environmentalists contend that the recent rash of serious oil spills and accidents at petrochemical plants is traceable to cost-cutting measures.

Which of the following, if true, would provide the strongest support for the position held by industry officials?

A) The petrochemical industry benefits if accidents do not occur, since accidents involve risk of employee injury as well as loss of equipment and product.
B) Petrochemical industry unions recently demanded that additional money be spent on safety and environment protection measures, but the unions readily abandoned those demands in exchange for job security.
C) Despite major cutbacks in most other areas of operation, the petrochemical industry has devoted more of its resources to environmental and safety measures in the last five years than in the preceding five years.
D) There is evidence that the most damaging of the recent oil spills would have been prevented had cost-cutting measures not been instituted.
E) Both the large fines and adverse publicity generated by the most recent oil spills have prompted the petrochemical industry to increase the resources devoted to oil-spill prevention.

OA:C

OG 2017 New Question

Bumping the thread for the experts review.

Simplify the argument -

Industry officials
Cutting costs to improve profits--> No impact on safety

Environmentalists
Cutting costs --> oil spills and accidents --> negative impact on safety.

We are asked to strengthen the industry officials' argument.

Option A - Incorrect.
this option says
No accidents --> No losses due to damage to equipment and employees.
This option does not make it clear why cost cutting measures had little to no impact on safety.

Option B - Incorrect.
this kind of weakens the argument. if they abandoned their demands for additional safety measures, probably that had a negative impact on safety.

Option C - Correct.
Gives a reason to say why the cost cutting measures had no impact on safety. Because, they did not impact spending on safety measures.

Option D - Incorrect.
Weakens the argument.

Option E - Incorrect.
Note that we are talking about the impact of cost-cutting measures implemented in the last 5 years. The new measures taken to improve safety have no impact on that. Hence, not relevant.