Energy Company Calls Halt to Drilling Project

A $17 million energy project in California that was supposed to demonstrate the feasibility of extracting vast amounts of heat from the earth

Last month, federal scientists said that the company had fallen far behind schedule because a huge rig hired to drill down about 12,000 feet, or more than two miles, on federal land had not been able to pierce surface formations called caprock. On Wednesday, the Bureau of Land Management approved a request by AltaRock to halt the drilling operation temporarily, said a bureau spokeswoman, Jan Bedrosian.