4. A Way to Make Texts Sound More Formal: Using Past Participles for Reductions of Passive Clauses

While reading the text in the course book, you came across sentences like:

Located 90 km off the coast of Brunei, the Champion West oilfield is Shell´s flagship project.

This sentence means the same as:

The Champion West oilfield, (which is) located 90 km off the coast of Brunei, is Shell´s flagship project.

The past participle “Located” in the first sentence above has been used to reduce the relative clause “which is located 90 km off the coast of Brunei” in the second sentence. This reduction not only made the sentence shorter, but also more formal. This use of past participles is typical of formal technical texts. Study this grammar point in detail in this grammar overview. Then practise the material in the context of general English here and here before moving on to a technical context in this task.