Geothermal Drilling Earthquakes, fear shuts down geysers project

Looks like as previously mentioned about the Basel geothermal drilling earthquakes, fear of earthquakes has shut down the largest US geothermal deep fissure project to date. Altarock, a Seattle based startup with over 30 mill in funding, has apparently closed shop on their “Geysers” project:

But on Friday, the Energy Department said that AltaRock had given notice this week that “it will not be continuing work at the Geysers” as part of the agency’s geothermal development program.

The project’s apparent collapse comes a day after Swiss government officials permanently shut down a similar project in Basel, because of the damaging earthquakes it produced in 2006 and 2007. […..] In addition to a $6 million grant from the Energy Department, AltaRock had attracted some $30 million in venture capital from high-profile investors like Google, Khosla Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. [full article]

But interesting to note, theyve decided to continue with an Oregon project. Hey, if we can save some money by experimenting on government land over the san andreas fault, why not save a couple bucks? a good thing about it though is it most likely allowed them to really explore the threshold conditions for the technology. o.k.