James Glanz, The New York Times
February 22, 2011
As they drill deeper and deeper in search of energy, engineering companies sometimes unleash subterranean forces that - like the sleeping dragon of Beowulf, left to guard the ancestral treasure - do not behave kindly or predictably when roused. The consequences can be disastrous, as BP, Transocean and other companies found when a fail-safe device called a blowout preventer was unable to stop oil and gas from gushing out of a damaged, 3.4-mile-deep well in the Gulf last year. The perils are not limited to drilling for oil: seekers of geothermal energy deep in the Earth's crust have induced earthquakes strong enough to frighten whole cities and stir implacable community opposition. As a journalist with a science background who has reported on these debacles, I have found the common factors to be, first, an unwillingness to step back and assess the true - and often daunting - extent of the risks and technical challenges involved; and second, an aversion to communicating those facts to the public before the dragon is loosed upon the world.
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