To the dismay of thousands of residents of Porter Ranch, Calif., whose lives have been upended by a huge natural-gas leak from a nearby well, the local utility says it will take at least another month and a half to shut it down. Early efforts to halt the leak or kill the well by injecting liquids into it failed because the liquids were not heavy enough to overcome the gas rushing up at nearly 200 times normal atmospheric pressure. So the utility, the Southern California Gas Company, is now pinning its hope on a relief well, which will allow the liquids to be injected much farther down. Drilling began Dec. 4 and is on schedule to be finished in late February, said Bret Lane, the company’s […]