The muddied workers from Cofor and Schlumberger Ltd. (SLB), an oil-services company that typically sinks wells in the deserts of Oman and deep waters off the shores of Brazil, will spend four months in Villejuif on the edges of the French capital. Perched on a towering rig, they will bore 2 kilometers, or 1.3 miles, under a tract of land wedged between low-income housing and the neat little white crosses of a local cemetery.
The wells will provide heat to nearby homes, schools and hospitals for decades to come as part of a broader push around the globe to develop geothermal power. The Paris region has the world’s second largest concentration after Iceland of so-called low-energy geothermal installations. It was also coveted for its shale oil prior to 2011 when France became the first nation to ban fracking.
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