DRILLING DEEP COULD BE DANGEROUS

Quake Fears Stall Energy Extraction Project
James Glanz, July 13, 2009 (NY Times)

"…[The Energy and Interior Departments] are stopping a contentious California project from fracturing bedrock miles underground and extracting its geothermal energy until a scientific review determines whether the project could produce dangerous earthquakes…

"The project by AltaRock Energy…had won a grant of $6.25 million from the Energy Department, and officials at the Interior Department had indicated that it was likely to issue permits allowing the company to fracture bedrock on federal land in one of the most seismically active areas of the world, Northern California."

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"But…federal officials said that AltaRock had not disclosed that a similar project in Basel, Switzerland, was shut down when it generated earthquakes that shook the city in 2006 and 2007. AltaRock officials denied the accusation, saying they had been forthcoming…[T]he federal agencies said the new study would focus specifically on the lessons that the experience in Basel held for the AltaRock project…

"…[A] spokeswoman for the Bureau of Land Management at the Interior Department, said no permits for fracturing the rock at the drilling site would be issued until the Energy Department completed the study…A senior official at AltaRock, James T. Turner, said the company had provided additional information…[Companies including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and an arm of Google have invested some $30 million in AltaRock.]"

The deeper you drill, the hotter it gets. (click to enlarge)

"Jeff Gospe, the president of a community organization in Anderson Springs, Calif., a small town two miles from the AltaRock project, said the town would welcome the federal intervention…The area…is already shaken by swarms of mostly small earthquakes set off by an extensive geothermal operation that drills into relatively shallow steam beds and extracts their heat to produce electricity.

"AltaRock plans to drill much deeper and for the first time fracture the hot underlying bedrock, then circulate water through the cracks and create more steam. The company maintains that the process will be safe and that its safeguards are more comprehensive than those that were in place for the Basel project…[F]ederal officials were [apparently] not satisfied with those assurances."