LA Times: On the morning of the day he died, David Taylor and his crew were looking for a "chimney" - a fissure in the earth where steam and oil periodically spurted into the air in an oil field west of Bakersfield.
Taylor, a construction supervisor for Chevron, had been battling a long-standing problem near a dormant well in the Midway-Sunset oil field. His job was to control leaks at Well 20 in a primordial tableau of sinkholes, small bubbling pools of scalding water and geysers that on occasion spewed...