Category: Lapindo di Media

  • Warga Desak BPLS Lakukan Evakuasi

    Warga Desak BPLS Lakukan Evakuasi

    SIDOARJO – Desakan terhadap Badan Penanggulangan Lumpur Sidoarjo (BPLS) agar segera mengevakuasi warga terus berdatangan. Kemarin (12/8) desakan itu datang dari M. Mirdas yang di dalam rumahnya muncul semburan gas disertai lumpur.

    Dia menegaskan bahwa rumahnya sudah tidak layak huni. Yaitu, rumah yang berlokasi di Kelurahan Jatirejo RT 4 RW 1, Kecamatan Porong, Sidoarjo. Itu terjadi setelah muncul semburan di dalam kamar dan samping rumahnya. “Ini sangat berbahaya,” katanya.

    Dia meminta BPLS melakukan evakuasi secepatnya. Sebab, kondisi rumahnya merupakan bukti bahwa kawasan tersebut berbahaya. “Bukti sudah ada. Sudah saatnya dievakuasi,” ucap pria yang juga anggota DPRD Jatim itu.

    Humas BPLS Akhmad Zulkarnain membenarkan bahwa peristiwa itu membuktikan kawasan rumah Mirdas berbahaya. Dia juga menjelaskan, semburan lumpur yang keluar disertai gas itu mudah terbakar. “Jadi, perlu kewaspadaan,” ujarnya.

    Terkait desakan evakuasi, Zulkarnain mengatakan, pihaknya akan menampung permintaan tersebut. BPLS sudah sering mengajukannya ke tingkat dewan pengarah. “Kami sudah melaporkan semuanya,” tuturnya.

    Namun, hingga saat ini belum ada keputusan menyangkut status kawasan tersebut. Dia menegaskan bahwa BPLS akan selalu berupaya membantu warga untuk mendapatkan haknya. “Kami akan selalu upayakan,” katanya.

    Seperti diberitakan, tiga kawasan di sebelah barat Jl Raya Porong belum masuk peta. Kawasan itu adalah Kelurahan Jatirejo bagian barat dan Siring bagian barat. Padahal, semburan lumpur dan gas sering muncul di kawasan tersebut. (riq/ib)

    © Jawa Pos

  • Harga Sama dengan Lapindo

    SIDOARJO – Meski pengukuran sudah dimulai, warga masih belum tenang. Sebab, sampai saat ini tidak ada kejelasan masalah harga tanah yang akan dibayarkan. Karena itu, warga berharap segera ada kejelasan menyangkut harga tersebut.

    Mereka adalah warga yang tinggal di Desa Besuki sebelah barat ruas bekas jalan tol, Pejarakan, dan Kedungcangkring. Semuanya masuk Kecamatan Jabon.

    Abdul Rokhim, wakil warga, mengakui adanya keresahan itu. Saat ini warga menanyakan harga tanah dan bangunan mereka yang sudah terendam. Mereka sangat berharap harganya disamakan dengan harga tanah dan bangunan yang diganti rugi PT Lapindo. “Kami berharap sama,” ujarnya.

    Rokhim juga mengatakan, seharusnya pada sosialisasi yang lalu dijelaskan pula harga ganti ruginya. Tujuannya, agar warga tidak resah.

    Deputi Sosial Badan Penanggulangan Lumpur Sidoarjo (BPLS) Soetjahjono Soejitno menjelaskan, soal harga akan dibahas dalam pertemuan berikutnya.

    Dia mengatakan, penentuan harga didasarkan pada Perpres No 14 Tahun 2007, yakni atas dasar keadilan.(riq/ib)

    © Jawa Pos

  • Semburan Baru di Jatirejo

    Semburan Baru di Jatirejo

    SIDOARJO – Semburan baru yang disertai gas mudah terbakar kembali muncul. Kali ini munculnya semburan berlokasi di Kelurahan Jatirejo bagian barat RT 2 RW 1. Semburan itu berdekatan, sekitar 4 meter, dengan Jl Raya Porong.

    Selain menyemburkan air dan gas, semburan tersebut mengeluarkan partikel lumpur agak kental. Partikel lumpur itu mengalir ke arah Jl Raya Porong. Akibatnya, bahu jalan tergenang air beserta lumpur.

    Humas Badan Penanggulangan Lumpur Sidoarjo (BPLS) Akhmad Zulkarnain mengatakan, semburan mulai muncul Minggu pagi (10/8). Namun, debitnya kecil seperti gelembung biasa. “Kami pikir tidak ada masalah,” ujarnya.

    Semburan itu mulai membesar Minggu pukul 23.00. Ketinggian air yang dikeluarkan mencapai 50 sentimeter. Warga sempat panik hingga kemudian melapor ke BPLS. “Kami langsung melakukan evakuasi,” jelas dia.

    Kemarin (11/8) semburan tersebut sudah tertutup drum berdiameter 50 sentimeter dengan ketinggian 1 meter. Di drum tersebut terpasang pipa vertikal dan horizontal. Pipa vertikal berfungsi untuk mengalirkan gas ke udara. Sedangkan yang horizontal berguna untuk mengalirkan air beserta lumpur ke sungai, yang terletak 10 meter dari semburan itu. (riq/ib)

    © Jawa Pos

  • Warga Pertanyakan Pengukuran

    SIDOARJO – Sosialisasi tentang rencana pengukuran lahan dan ganti rugi telah dilaksanakan Badan Penanggulangan Lumpur Sidoarjo (BPLS) di Desa Besuki. Dalam kesempatan itu, warga mengajukan beberapa pertanyaan menarik.

    Misalnya, terkait bentuk fisik yang diukur berdasar kondisi sebelum atau sesudah terendam lumpur. Abdul Rokhim, wakil warga, mempertanyakan hal itu. Menurut dia, kondisi bangunan sebelum dan sesudah terendam berbeda. Misalnya, lantai yang sebelumnya keramik sekarang tidak bisa dilihat kembali. Selain itu, beberapa benda rumah telah dijarah orang. “Jadi, kondisinya sudah tidak sama,” katanya.

    Jika didasarkan pada kondisi terakhir, Rokhim menyatakan, banyak warga yang rugi. Sebab, bentuk fisik saat ini tidak sebaik kondisi awal. Otomatis, hasil pengukurannya berbeda. “Sebaiknya disesuaikan dengan kondisi awal,” pintanya.

    Pertanyaan itu ditanggapi Humas BPLS Akhmad Zulkarnain. Dia menjelaskan, ketika pengukuran nanti, tim pengukur wajib didampingi pemilik rumah. Mereka (pemilik rumah) akan ditanya kondisi bangunan yang sebelumnya dan dibandingkan dengan sekarang. “Untuk itu, kami mohon warga menuturkan kondisi yang sebenarnya,” tuturnya.

    Bila pemilik rumah sedang berhalangan, Zulkarnain meminta ada pihak yang sudah diberi mandat untuk mendampingi tim pengukur. Dengan begitu, tim pengukur tidak kesusahan mencari orang yang akan ditanya tentang kondisi sebelum dan sesudah terendam lumpur. “Minimal harus ada wakilnya,” ucapnya.

    Zulkarnain menambahkan, keberhasilan pengukuran bergantung pada kerja sama beberapa pihak. Yakni, tim pengukur yang terdiri atas Dinas Pekerjaan Umum (PU) Cipta Karya dan Badan Pertanahan Nasional (BPN) serta dukungan dari masyarakat. “Semuanya harus bekerja sama,” katanya.

    Zulkarnain menegaskan, pengukuran akan berlangsung secara optimal. Supaya cepat selesai, tim pengukur bekerja dua kali dalam sehari. Yaitu, siang mereka melakukan pengukuran, sedangkan malamnya membuat rekapitulasi hasil pengukuran.

    “Semua itu dikerjakan di pos yang bertempat di salah satu rumah warga,” ujarnya. Dia juga menyatakan bahwa warga bisa melihat hasil rekapitulasi pengukuran di posko tersebut.

    Ditanya soal bukti tanah, Zulkarnain mengatakan tidak masalah. Sebab, pihak BPN tidak mempersoalkan letter C atau pethok D. Yang dipersoalkan adalah ukuran tanah yang sebenarnya. “Maka, dilakukan pengukuran,” jelasnya.

    Kemarin malam (8/8) sosialisasi dilaksanakan di Balai Desa Pejarakan. Mereka yang hadir adalah warga Desa Pejarakan dan Kedungcangkring, Kecamatan Jabon. Di Pejarakan ada 9 RT yang masuk peta, sedangkan di Kedungcangkring ada 3 RT.

    Zulkarnain menjelaskan, sosialisasi hanya membahas masalah pengukuran. (riq/ib)

    © Jawa Pos

  • BPLS Mulai Sosialisasi, Kali Pertama di Desa Besuki

    SIDOARJO – Kerisauan warga tiga desa direspons Badan Penanggulangan Lumpur Sidoarjo (BPLS). Kemarin malam (7/8) BPLS melakukan sosialisasi tentang rencana pengukuran dan ganti rugi lahan dan bangunan milik warga.

    Sosialisasi pertama dilakukan di Desa Besuki, Kecamatan Jabon. Malam nanti, akan dilanjutkan ke Desa Kedungcangkring dan Pejarakan, Kecamatan Jabon.

    Sosialisasi pertama kemarin bertempat di Balai Desa Besuki, Kecamatan Jabon. Hadir tim BPLS, wakil Dinas Pekerjaan Umum (PU) Cipta Karya, Badan Pertanahan Nasional, dan beberapa pihak yang terkait proses ganti rugi.

    Dari pihak warga, yang hadir adalah perangkat desa setempat. Juga, 17 ketua RT dari 5 RW dan dua wakil warga.

    Berdasar data sementara, jumlah kepala keluarga (KK) mencapai 941. Luas sawah 509.588 meter persegi. Luas pekarangan 374.918 meter persegi. Bangunan mencapai 236.780,33 meter persegi. Wilayah yang dimaksud adalah Desa Besuki sebelah barat bekas ruas jalan tol.

    Staf Humas BPLS Akhmad Kusairi mengatakan, sosialisasi bertujuan menjelaskan persiapan serta pelaksanaan pengukuran dan mekanisme untuk mencairkan ganti rugi.

    Sosialisasi juga menegaskan status tanah letter C dan pethok D. “Ini akan dijelaskan dalam forum itu,” katanya.

    Dengan adanya sosialisasi tersebut, warga diharapkan bisa mengerti prosedur ganti rugi. Dengan begitu, dana yang diambilkan melalui APBNP bisa cair secepatnya. ”Kami berharap tidak ada hambatan,” ucapnya.

    Abdul Rokhim, wakil warga, menyambut baik langkah BPLS. Dia berharap itu diikuti penjelasan petunjuk pelaksanaan (juklak) dan petunjuk teknis (juknis). ”Kabarnya, juklak dan juknis sedang disusun,” ujarnya.

    Hingga berita ini ditulis, sosialisasi masih berlangsung sehingga hasilnya belum diketahui. (riq/ib)

    © Jawa Pos

  • Perjuangan Panjang Warga Pemilik Tanah Letter C

    Tolak Resettlement, Tuntut Pembayaran 80 Persen Tunai

    Tanpa terasa dua tahun lebih lumpur menyembur di Sidoarjo. Selama itu pula berbagai penderitaan dialami warga. Salah satunya kehilangan tempat tinggal. PT Minarak telah membayar uang muka ganti rugi 20 persen. Namun, pelunasan 80 persen sampai saat ini masih banyak yang belum terbayarkan.

    Dwi Sulastriyah, 32, asal Dusun Sengon, Desa Renokenongo, Kecamatan Porong, mengaku resah. Sebab, sampai saat ini dia belum menerima pelunasan ganti rugi tersebut. Padahal, dia sangat membutuhkan uang itu untuk melanjutkan hidup dan membangun rumah di tempat lain.

    “Saya sangat membutuhkan (uang, Red) itu,” ujarnya. Saat ini yang ada dalam benaknya hanyalah pelunasan ganti rugi rumahnya. Namun, untuk mendapatkan haknya itu butuh perjuangan sangat berat. Sebab, surat-surat tanahnya dianggap tidak memenuhi persyaratan yang ditetapkan PT Minarak. “Surat tanah saya hanya Letter C,” katanya.

    Pada pelunasan 80 persen, PT Minarak menetapkan sertifikat harus hak milik (SHM) atau hak guna bangunan (SHGB). Sebab, persyaratan akta jual beli harus menyertakan sertifikat tersebut.

    Hal itulah yang membuatnya prihatin. Gara-gara bukti tanah hanya Letter C, nasib mereka terkesan dipermainkan. Yakni, PT Minarak tidak mau membayar dalam bentuk tunai, melainkan dengan resettlement. “Padahal, saya butuh uang untuk membeli atau membangun rumah baru,” ucapnya.

    Keprihatinan yang sama dirasakan Untung, 35, warga lain. Ganti rugi yang diterima belum tuntas. Padahal, rumahnya sudah hancur untuk pembangunan tanggul. “Ini masih tanah saya karena belum dilunasi,” ujar yang sambil menunjuk tanggul yang berdiri di atas bekas rumahnya.

    Atas dasar itulah dia bersama warga lain melarang pekerjaan tanggul di kawasan Sengon, Desa Renokenongo, Kecamatan Porong. Penolakan itu dilakukan dengan memasang tiang di sekitar tanggul tersebut. Tiang yang terbuat dari bambu setinggi 1,5 meter itu bertuliskan “Jangan Ditanggul”.

    “Kami tidak izinkan sebelum ada pelunasan ganti rugi dalam bentuk tunai,” tegasnya.

    Keprihatinan itu juga dipicu oleh riwayat tanah tersebut yang umumnya tanah warisan. Artinya, ketika lumpur menenggelamkan kawasannya, tenggelam pula nostaliga yang pernah mereka alami.

    Ahmad Sutono, salah satu ketua RT di desa itu, berharap penderitaan warga cepat selesai. Hal itu ditandai dengan pelunasan ganti rugi 80 persen tunai. Dia tidak menginginkan resettlement. “Yang diinginkan warga hanya pembayaran tunai,” katanya.

    Dia meminta pemerintah segera turun tangan untuk menyelesaikan permasalahan tersebut. Sebab, warga sudah sangat menderita. Mereka sudah kehabisan uang untuk mengontrak rumah. Pastilah uang tunai yang dibutuhkan. “Karena itu, kami ingin dibayar tunai,” pinta Ahmad.

    Humas Badan Penanggulangan Lumpur Sidoarjo (BPLS) Akhmad Zulkarnain memahami posisi warga. Dia berharap warga mengomunikasikannya dengan BPLS.  “Keluh-kesah mereka akan kami sampaikan ke tingkat atas. Atau kami jadikan dasar untuk mendesak PT Minarak,” ujar Zulkarnain yang mengaku siap diajak diskusi kapan saja.

    Dia juga meminta warga mengizinkan pengerjaan tanggul dilanjutkan kembali. Jika tanggul tidak diperkuat, kawasan lain bisa terancam. “Itu akan merugikan warga lain,” tegas dia. (ib)

    © Jawa Pos

  • Ganti Rugi Belum Lunas, Warga Patok Tanggul

    SIDOARJO, KOMPAS – Sekitar 50 warga korban lumpur Lapindo memasang patok di tanggul lumpur Lapindo di Kecamatan Porong, Kabupaten Sidoarjo, Jawa Timur, Minggu (10/8). Hal itu sebagai bentuk protes warga karena sisa ganti rugi sebesar 80 persen tak kunjung dibayar oleh PT Minarak Lapindo Jaya.

    Warga korban lumpur dari RT 18, 19, dan 20 Desa Renokenongo tersebut bergerak menuju tanggul sekitar pukul 11.00. Beberapa warga memasang patok kayu bertuliskan nama masing-masing untuk menunjukkan bekas tempat tinggalnya sebelum terendam lumpur.

    “”Kami menolak pembangunan tanggul sebelum ganti rugi dilunasi,”” kata Ketua RT 20 yang juga koordinator aksi, Ahmad Sutomo.

    Warga lain, Dwi Sulastriyah, mengatakan, “PT Minarak Lapindo Jaya (MLJ) ingkar janji karena hingga masa kontrak rumah habis Juli lalu, sisa ganti rugi sebesar 80 persen hingga kini belum diberikan.”

    Kepala Humas Badan Penanggulangan Lumpur di Sidoarjo (BPLS) Ahmad Zulkarnain menyatakan, pihaknya akan mendesak PT MLJ agar segera membayar sisa ganti rugi. Jika tidak segera diselesaikan, hal itu akan mengganggu penanganan teknis lumpur Lapindo oleh BPLS.

    Menurut Zulkarnain, selain warga yang belum menerima sisa ganti rugi 80 persen, masih ada sekitar 1.000 korban lumpur yang belum menerima ganti rugi sama sekali. ””PT MLJ sudah berkomitmen akan menyelesaikan paling lambat September 2008. Jika proses verifikasi selesai, ganti rugi akan segera dibayar,”” katanya.

    Wakil Presiden PT MLJ Andi Darussalam Tabussala mengatakan, warga yang masa kontraknya habis pada Juli atau Agustus 2008 dijanjikan akan diberi perpanjangan masa kontrak selama empat bulan. (APO)

  • New report says Indonesia mud disaster man-made

    JAKARTA, June 10 AAP – Indonesia’s devastating mud volcano is a man-made disaster caused by exploratory drilling for gas, a new report has found.

    Researchers say the finding disproves the theory, long-argued by the exploration well’s operator, that an earthquake 250km away was to blame.

    The mud volcano burst through the earth two years ago during deep drilling at the exploratory gas well, linked to Indonesia’s richest man and also part-owned by Australian company Santos.

    It has spewed millions of cubic metres of hot, stinking sludge in heavily populated East Java over the past two years.

    “We are more certain than ever that the Lusi mud volcano is an unnatural disaster and was triggered by drilling the Banjar-Panji-1 well,” Professor Richard Davies, of Durham University in the United Kingdom, said in a statement.

    The mud now covers seven square kilometres, and has displaced 30,000 people and swallowed 11 villages, thousands of homes, businesses, paddy fields and mosques. It continues to spurt 100,000 cubic metres of mud each day.

    The study – described as the most detailed scientific analysis to date – was published in the academic journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters this week.

    It follows a study by Durham University last year which found the mud eruption was “almost certainly man-made”, and caused by the exploratory drilling.

    But the well’s operator Lapindo – linked to the powerful family of Indonesia’s Public Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie – has long argued it was a natural disaster caused by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake in Yogyakarta two days earlier, a claim backed by a Jakarta court ruling last year.

    In the latest study, University of California researchers tested claims that the eruption was caused by the Yogyakarta tremor and found it did not play a role.

    “We have known for hundreds of years that earthquakes can trigger eruptions – in this case, the earthquake was simply too small and too far away,” said the university’s Professor Michael Manga.

    The report found the effect of the earthquake was minimal, with only a “tiny” resulting change to underground pressure. It said scientists were 99 per cent certain drilling operations were to blame.

    The research comes just weeks after another study by Durham University, which found the mud volcano was in danger of collapsing on itself. It warned the bleak, sodden landscape is sinking – and could subside by as much as 146 metres over the coming years.

    Comment was being sought from Lapindo.

    © AAP News Wire

  • A Wound in The Earth

    In Indonesia, an entire district has been buried by an eruption of boiling, noxious mud. Was it a natural disaster-or an industrial accident?

    On the morning of June 2, 2006, Ahmad Mudakir, a 33-year-old factory worker from Porong, a sleepy district in eastern Java, was in his front yard tinkering with his motorbike. A little after 8 a.m. he felt a rumbling in the ground-worrying, but not wholly unexpected in this seismically fitful corner of Indonesia. What happened next was anything but expected. Mudakir watched as a neighbor, who had been inside eating breakfast, came tumbling into the street. “There was an explosion,” Mudakir recalls. “Then the mud started to flow.” He gaped in amazement as a geyser of scalding sludge shot five meters into the air, collapsing the roof of his neighbor’s house. Mudakir froze. Then he gathered his mother and two brothers from inside his own house. “The whole village was panicking. Everyone ran.” Mudakir didn’t stop to collect his family’s belongings. He assumed he’d be able to return home.

    Today, Mudakir’s village, along with much of the rest of Porong, is gone, swallowed by an ash-gray lake of mud. The noxious sludge, incredibly, continues to flow at a rate of up to 5.3 million cu. ft. (150,000 cu m) a day-enough to fill 50 Olympic-sized swimming pools. In total, Porong has been smothered beneath nearly 3.5 billion cu. ft. (100 million cu m) of the stuff. The mud has buried 12 villages, displaced around 16,000 people and caused more than a dozen deaths. Porong hasn’t just been destroyed; it has been erased. Where Mudakir’s house once stood, there is now a vast, gurgling expanse, with only the occasional protruding tree branch or rooftop to suggest the landscape entombed beneath it.

    Locals call it Lusi-a portmanteau of the Indonesian word for mud, lumpur, and the name of the nearest city, Sidoarjo. Lusi is a mud volcano, though that appellation is somewhat misleading. The mud is actually more like brackish water. And, unlike the igneous volcanoes that dot Indonesia’s countryside, the underground plumbing fueling Lusi is largely mysterious. Twenty-two months after it first erupted, Lusi remains the world’s most bewildering environmental disaster. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Richard Davies, a geologist at Britain’s Durham University and one of only a handful of experts on mud volcanoes. “It’s a scene, when you see it, you can only say, ‘Oh, my God, it’s a complete bloody mess.’”

    The destruction is total. At the eruption’s epicenter-known to workers at the site as the Big Hole-a 100-ft. (30 m) plume of white smoke billows into the sky, obscuring the sun and spreading the sulfurous odor of rotting eggs. On a narrow causeway leading to the caldera, dozens of trucks idle in a queue, waiting to deliver soil for the massive earthworks meant to contain the mud. Already, they have transported more than 88 million cu. ft. (2.5 million cu m) of dirt to build eight miles (13 km) of levees around the site. Dozens of cranes work late into the evening piling the dirt atop bulwarks nearly 65 ft. (20 m) tall in places.

    As the mud rises, so must the levees, but so far Lusi seems to be outpacing human engineering. Twice the earthworks have been breached-most recently on Jan. 4-flooding more houses. On Nov. 22, 2006, the weight of the soil ruptured a natural-gas pipeline, causing a massive fireball that incinerated 13 workers.

    According to an International Monetary Fund estimate, Lusi has already cost Indonesia $3.7 billion in damage and damage control. And things are likely to get worse. As mud spews up from the ground, the area around the eruption is gradually sinking. Eventually, Porong could become a giant sucking wound in the Earth.

    Ground Forces

    INDONESIA IS BOTH BLESSED AND CURSED by geology. Volcanic ash contributes to the archipelago’s fecund soil. Yet eruptions periodically kill thousands. Indonesia is also rich in minerals and oil, exporting nearly half a million barrels a day. All told, the country’s buried wealth accounts for almost 30% of its total exports. But the same grinding geologic processes that make this wealth possible also bedevil Indonesia with disasters like the 2004 earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 160,000 people in Sumatra. Lusi is unlike any previous disaster, however. Unfolding in implacable slow motion, it has confounded Indonesian engineers and mystics alike. The mostly poor villagers who have lost homes and livelihoods to the mud complain that the response to the unfolding disaster has been equally sluggardly-a symptom, perhaps, of the fault lines in Indonesian society’s own unsettled foundations.

    That’s because mud isn’t the only thing boiling over in Porong. Villagers displaced by the eruption blame the disaster on PT Lapindo Brantas, an Indonesian mining company drilling for natural gas in the area. Lapindo is partly controlled by the family of Aburizal Bakrie, Coordinating Minister for the People’s Welfare, one of Indonesia’s wealthiest men and an ally of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Victims of the disaster say that a murky web of political influence and corporate fecklessness has blunted the official response to the mud eruption. “Everyone is suspicious,” says Mas Achmad Santosa, one of Indonesia’s most prominent environmental lawyers. “It’s a politically heavy case.”

    Some independent geologists, including Davies, believe that Lapindo may have inadvertently roused the awesome force slumbering beneath Indonesia. “I’m 98% certain this was due to drilling,” he says. Davies, who visited Porong last year and has studied the eruption extensively, thinks he knows how that happened. On May 27, Lapindo’s Banjar Panji-1 well was operating in a field not far from Ahmad Mudakir’s village. The well’s target was a shelf of limestone some 9,800 ft. (3,000 m) below the surface. Lapindo’s drillers were searching for natural-gas deposits, but the well was exploratory. No one knew for certain the subterranean conditions beneath Porong. The drillers had reached about 9,300 ft. (2,800 m) when they noticed a drop in pressure inside the well.

    Such a drop, called a loss of circulation, isn’t uncommon in gas drilling. It usually means that natural fractures inside the borehole are allowing drilling fluid to leak out. Lapindo’s engineers responded by pumping heavy drilling mud into the well to seal the cracks and restore pressure. Then they began to pull out the drill. Davies thinks that while they were removing the drill on the morning of May 28, they set off a massive “kick,” in which high-pressure water and gas from the surrounding rock flowed into, rather than out of, the borehole. To prevent a potentially dangerous blowout, the drillers shut vents at the surface, effectively corking the pressure inside the well. But it was too late. Water from a pressurized aquifer thousands of feet below the surface surged upward, picking up debris from a layer of mudstone as it did. Davies compares the effect to a bicycle pump. When the pump is sealed, the pressure is contained inside. But when it is allowed to escape, air comes rushing out. Lapindo’s drilling primed a natural pump, he believes. Unable to escape through the capped well, the water sought other avenues. At around 5 a.m. the following morning, the first eruption started in a rice paddy about 500 ft. (150 m) from the Banjar Panji-1 rig.

    Banjar Panji-1 never should have gotten so out of control, according to Richard Swarbrick, a British expert on geological pressure and a consultant to oil companies. Usually, when drilling in geologically unstable areas, engineers install steel casing at greater depths, where the low density of the rock might allow fluid to escape from the borehole. In the event of a kick, the casing allows drillers to maintain the integrity of the well. Swarbrick, who has reviewed Lapindo’s drilling plan, says the company originally intended to install casing at depths of 3,500 ft., 4,500 ft. and 8,500 ft. (1,000 m, 1,400 m and 2,600 m). “The conventional well design in that sort of pressure environment would be to install casing,” Swarbrick says. Yet, either through oversight or because of technical problems, Lapindo did not case the hole to the planned depth. “For whatever reason, they weren’t following the plan,” Swarbrick says. “They had 5,000 feet of open hole. That’s taking one heck of a risk.”

    The Nature Argument

    LAPINDO SAYS ITS DRILLING PLAN WAS approved by the government. “The drilling process complied with mandatory regulations,” says company vice president Yuniwati Teryana. “We met the requirements.” Teryana offers another explanation for the eruption. Two days before Lusi started, a 6.3-magnitude earthquake shook the city of Yogyakarta, about 190 miles (300 km) to the west of Porong. Lapindo believes that the quake opened natural fractures that allowed the mud to escape. “The mud eruption is caused by a natural phenomenon,” Teryana says. That’s an opinion shared by Adriano Mazzini, a geologist at the University of Oslo.

    After studying data provided by Lapindo, Mazzini concluded that Lusi was probably caused by the May 27 earthquake. “There is strong evidence for a naturally triggered event,” he says. Davies believes that if the eruption had been caused by the quake, it would have occurred sooner afterward; he cites research suggesting Porong was too far from the earthquake’s epicenter to be affected.

    Given that no one fully understands the powerful subterranean engine powering Lusi, efforts to stop it have proven predictably ineffectual. Two relief wells intended to reduce pressure inside the original well have failed. Early last year, scientists from Indonesia’s Bandung Institute of Technology came up with a more novel idea: dropping thousands of concrete balls, linked with chains like a string of pearls, into the Big Hole. The idea was to bleed off pressure inside the volcano slowly enough so that Lusi wouldn’t simply erupt elsewhere-or shoot the concrete balls back out like a cannon. Satria Bijaksana, one of the Bandung scientists who came up with the idea, says that the balls reduced the mud’s flow temporarily. But the project was abandoned last March when a new government team took over management of the site. More recently, a Japanese team proposed building a 130-ft.-high (40 m high) dam to contain the mud. Scientists familiar with Lusi have dismissed that idea. Because the ground beneath the caldera is still sinking, a heavy concrete dam would likely rupture.

    Going with the Flow

    LUSI MAY, IN FACT, BE UNSTOPPABLE. IN 1979, the oil company Shell set off a similar eruption while drilling off the shore of Brunei. That mudflow took 20 years and 20 relief wells to halt, according to Mark Tingay, a geologist at the University of Adelaide in Australia. Lusi may eventually choke itself as mud clogs its interior plumbing. But if left to die on its own, Davies estimates that it could continue to erupt for years, and perhaps even decades. Hardi Prasetyo, deputy head of the new government team in charge of Lusi, says that his workers are now focusing on containing, rather than stopping, the mud. The current strategy includes channeling the sludge into the nearby Porong River in the hope that it will be flushed to the sea. Mud flows through a massive spillway to a pumping station, from which it gushes into the river. Two dredges work to keep the waterway open. But already, the river is filling with mud. At a shrimp farm downstream, where men stripped to their underpants wade through paddies, workers complain that the mud is clogging their water supply. “This is a war,” says Prasetyo, gesturing at a line of trucks rumbling along a levee. “We are not promising to stop it. We must also pray to God.”

    Locals have turned to less orthodox methods. According to one popular story, the Lapindo drilling may have angered a spirit living in a tree near the eruption site. Such beliefs have an enduring appeal in this part of Indonesia, where religion is a syncretic mix of Islam and animism, and Lusi has drawn mystics from Bali and Borneo, who have sacrificed chickens, monkeys and even a cow to mollify the upset spirit. The government’s engineering team has tried similar tactics; a spokesman says the group has hired diviners to pray for rain to wash the mud away.

    Along with the mystics have come opportunists. To attract curious visitors, one enterprising local hotel changed its name to Kuala Lumpur: “Lake of Mud.” In the roads near Lusi, shirtless men dart in and out of traffic selling bags of roasted nuts and dried fruit. They have also installed themselves at certain busy intersections, and demand a small levy to let cars pass. At the top of a levee, the men eagerly tout CDs compiled from video footage of the disaster. “Professional best,” promises one CD featuring a photo of a charred, mud-crusted corpse on its front cover. Some of the CD sellers are displaced villagers; others are merely hoping to make a little money. One man cheerfully says he is a pickpocket. For 10,000 rupiah, or about one dollar, the touts offer visitors motorbike tours of the site.

    One, a laconic, mostly toothless man named Purwanto, says he was a farmer before the mud smothered his rice fields. He now makes extra cash taking tourists to the wreckage of his house, located in the shadow of the levees. Purwanto’s village flooded last year when the dikes broke, and, although it hasn’t been fully inundated yet, most of the people have demolished their homes for scrap and moved on. At present, the village looks like it has been carpet-bombed, with piles of rubble rising out of the greasy water. Purwanto points out an especially large mound: the remains of the town’s grandest house. His own more modest home is gone except for the broken stubble of the walls. “I was born at this house,” Purwanto says, sucking contemplatively on a clove-scented cigarette. From a nearby mosque, still being used despite the rising mud, the call of the muezzin echoes through the abandoned village. “Where my parents are buried is covered by the mud,” Purwanto adds.

    There’s no question about whom the villagers blame for their distress. At a refugee camp in a local outdoor market, where more than 2,000 people live in converted, tarp-covered stalls amid goats grazing contentedly on piles of garbage, graffiti makes their target clear: “Lapindo terrorist,” one reads. The company provides food for everyone in the camp, along with services such as a medical clinic and a makeshift mosque. But the villagers are quick to recite a litany of complaints, from the quality of the rations to the health effects of the mud (though the government team says the gas coming from Lusi has no ill effect, locals complain of difficulty breathing and strange rashes).

    Mostly, though, they complain about money. On the orders of the Indonesian government, Lapindo has agreed to compensate the villagers with a total of $412 million-the company is offering 20% of the money up front, with the balance paid within two years. “It will not be enough,” says Riati, a 45-year-old woman sitting outside the 16-ft.-wide (5 m wide) cubicle where she lives with her husband and sister. Riati says she turned down Lapindo’s offer of 40 million rupiah, or about $4,500-with an initial payment of 8 million rupiah-because she says even the full amount is not enough for her to buy a new home. Teryana, the Lapindo vice president, says the company hopes the holdout villagers can be persuaded to accept the compensation scheme.

    Anger Management

    AS NEGOTIATIONS HAVE DRAGGED ON, THE refugees are growing increasingly militant. In one corner of the market camp, villagers have stockpiled sharpened bamboo stakes-a defense against possible forced eviction. The villagers have also directed their anger at local officials regarded as allies of the company. At one recent protest, a crowd of about 200 people occupied a government compound to demand the resignation of a village chief. The demonstration began almost casually, with families picnicking or resting beneath the shade of a banyan tree. But tempers rose with the broiling midday heat. A squad of policemen armed with machine guns arrived and took up a position opposite the protesters.

    “Please respect our suffering,” a man shouted through a loudspeaker. A scuffle broke out between police and protesters, and the policemen surged forward, kicking and pushing the scattering demonstrators. One of the protest’s leaders explained that the police had previously exercised restraint when dealing with them. “We carry out our protests in a peaceful manner,” he said. “We never have anarchy.” Then he added, for portentous effect: “Not yet.” The demonstrations are indeed growing more aggressive: on Feb. 19, villagers blockaded a main road in the Sidoarjo area to protest a new parliamentary report that concludes Lusi was a natural disaster.

    Fueling the refugees’ anger is the fear that Lapindo will walk away from its promises. Last September, PT Energi Mega Persada, a company controlling 50% of the Lapindo drilling project and connected to Bakrie, the Indonesian Cabinet minister, attempted to unload Lapindo for $2 to a company based on the island of Jersey but owned by Bakrie’s family conglomerate.

    When Indonesian financial regulators blocked that sale, Energi Mega tried to sell half the beleaguered Lapindo to the Freehold Group, registered in the British Virgin Islands. That deal also collapsed amid controversy. The attempted corporate reshuffling raised fears among many that Lapindo was preparing to declare bankruptcy, thus potentially allowing parent company Energi Mega Persada to evade any liability for Lusi. Lapindo says it is committed to compensating Lusi’s victims.

    Critics say the government’s own response to the disaster has been muddy at best. “The government is not serious in its handling of the disposal of the mud or settling the social problems caused by the disaster,” says Sonny Keraf, Indonesia’s former Environment Minister and head of a parliamentary investigation into Lusi. “They are leaving the people to face the company when it should be acting as a bridge between them.” Keraf says that, while he believes Lapindo is acting in good faith, the government’s indecisiveness is blunting any sense of urgency. A yearlong police investigation into the eruption has resulted in no indictments or clear conclusions. “It’s all about politics,” says Ivan Valentina Ageung, head of legal affairs for the environmental group Walhi, referring to the disaster in general. Walhi sued Lapindo, alleging it was responsible for Lusi; that, as well as another lawsuit, were decided in favor of Lapindo. A spokesman for Yudhoyono denies that Bakrie’s connection to the administration has influenced the government’s response. Indeed, it was Yudhoyono who ordered Lapindo to compensate the displaced villagers.

    But cleaning up Lusi’s mess won’t be easy. In a worrying sign, heavy rains in early January caused a breach in the levees, forcing more than a hundred families to evacuate. With the government’s attempts to stop or channel the mud faltering, and the tide rising by the day, the sludge that swallowed Porong could eventually threaten another quarter-million homes. Indonesia’s Big Hole only gets deeper.

    Petter Ritter | © Time

  • Indonesian Firms Denied Drilling Caused Mud Volcano

    JAKARTA (Reuters) – A volcano that started spewing hot mud in Indonesia two years ago displacing more than 50,000 people was triggered by tectonic activity, experts working for the energy firm blamed by some for the disaster said on Thursday.

    The comments contrast with the view of an international team of experts who said on Monday that drilling for a gas exploration well, and not an earthquake, set off the volcano in East Java.

    A geologist and drilling expert working for oil and gas firm Lapindo Brantas said that the international team, led by Richard Davies of Britain’s Durham University, had based their findings on the wrong data and assumptions.

    “Experts opinion, Davies and others, that concluded that the burst came from the drilling well is based on a study that used the wrong data and assumption,” Edy Sutriono, drilling expert at Lapindo, told a news conference.

    The international team had said records kept by Lapindo during the drilling of the gas exploration well called Banjar-Panji-1 showed an underground blowout that could have triggered the disaster.

    But Bambang Istadi, a geologist at Lapindo, said tectonic activity had caused an old escarpment to crack and become the channel for the mud to flow.

    The company and some experts have argued that the mud flow was caused by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake in Yogyakarta and its aftershocks that happened two days before the eruption. That quake, centred 160 miles from the mud volcano, killed 6,000 people and left 1.5 million homeless.

    Richard Davies told Reuters on Thursday that the well was being drilled next to a mud volcano at the same time it erupted.

    The hot noxious mud began spewing near the gas exploration site in Sidoarjo, in East Java, on May 29. “I mean, it’s just I’m sorry, there’s just too much evidence now to propose that this isn’t due to the well,” he added, noting there would be a public debate with Lapindo experts on the issue in late October this year in Cape Town, South Africa.

    The mud, which is flo wing at a rate of more than 100,000 cubic metres a day, has displaced more than 50,000 people and covered more than 2.5 square miles.

    A mud volcano is usually a naturally occurring phenomenon created when a mix of mud, water and gas forms underground and is forced to the surface. There are a few thousand on earth.

    PT Energi Mega Persada indirectly controls Lapindo, which holds a 50 percent stake in the Brantas block where the mud originated. PT Medco Energi International Tbk holds a 32 percent stake and Australia-based Santos Ltd the rest.

    The situation has also become a major embarrassment for the government since Energi is owned by the Bakrie Group, controlled by the family of chief social welfare minister, Aburizal Bakrie.

    Indonesia’s government has ordered Lapindo to pay 3.8 trillion rupiah ($408.1 million) in compensation to the victims and to cover the damage ($1=9311 Rupiah).

    Olivia Rondonuwu | © Reuters

  • Jakarta puts own interests first in tale of two disasters

    On May 27 last year, 6,650 people died and 450,000 homes were damaged or destroyed when an earthquake struck near the Indonesian city of Yogyakarta.

    Two days later, mud started gushing from the ground 280km to the east after a mishap near the town of Sidoharjo at an exploratory drilling well. More than 11,000 homes and two dozen businesses have since been buried under 20m-deep mud flows that are still spewing at a rate of 130,000 cubic m a day. Rail, road and gas links to a large section of east Java have been severely disrupted, sending reconstruction costs and estimated economic losses soaring to billions of dollars, more than that of the earthquake.

    A year on, the Indonesian government’s contrasting responses to these two separate disasters demonstrate the significance of decisive political leadership and the continuing power of well- connected businesspeople.

    Only 1 per cent of people who lost their homes in Yogyakarta lack temporary shelter or a permanent new home. More than 90 per cent of markets, schools and health centres have been rebuilt and more than 80 per cent of damaged irrigation networks are functioning properly.

    “In the 10 years that I’ve been doing this, this (recovery) has gone the most smoothly,” says Peter Manfield, of the United Nations’ co-ordination office.

    Bill Marsden, recovery co-ordinator for the International Federation of the Red Cross in Yogyakarta, says the reconstruction process could be finished next year, a year earlier than expected.

    “The crucial thing was the speed with which the government mobilised the money and the system that was used,” he says. “It wrong-footed everyone. No one thought it would be possible to disburse so much money so quickly. It has shown what can be done with the right political will.”

    The local government in Bantul, the worst-affected district, received its 2007 reconstruction funds in April; regular central government budget allocations are unlikely to be disbursed for another month.

    President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono had good reason to act so efficiently. “Yogyakarta is the heartland of the nation,” says a diplomat. “The president could not afford to neglect millions of people on his doorstep.”

    The situation in Sidoharjo could not be more different. Lapindo Brantas, the company doing the drilling that police say triggered the mudflow, is owned by the family of Aburizal Bakrie. Mr Bakrie is the senior welfare minister and a prominent member of Golkar, which as the largest party in parliament provides key support to Mr Yudhoyono. This has cast a dark shadow across the whole relief operation.

    “If Bakrie hadn’t been involved, the situation would not have been like it is now,” says Anton Soedjarwo, director of Dian Desa, a relief organisation. “The response would have been more pragmatic.” Mr Bakrie has denied that Lapindo employees’ negligence caused the disaster but he has agreed to buy all the victims’ destroyed property and pay some of the clean-up cost.

    Lapindo has been ordered to pay for much of the clean-up but no one in the government is willing to say that the company was responsible for causing the mudflow. Political analysts and government officials say the dilemma facing Mr Yudhoyono is that he does not want to alienate a crucial supporter but he cannot afford to let Mr Bakrie off the hook.

    “The result is that he has been indecisive and the people on the ground are suffering the consequences,” says an official involved in disaster management. “When elite interests are involved, they always seem to take priority over tackling the core of the problem.”

    Virtually all affected residents have received money for rent and monthly allowances from Lapindo. But only a few dozen have begun to receive compensation promised by Lapindo.

    Khairul Huda, a university lecturer who has helped co-ordinate the response in one village, says the frustration over the slow disbursement of money has grown to a point where demonstrations have become regular.

    “The problem is the political will of the government and Lapindo. It’s just not there,” he says. “We don’t know whether there’s an elite conspiracy or not. We just know we’re not getting our money.”

    Despite the scale of the destruction, Mr Yudhoyono has yet officially to declare the mudflow a disaster. Central government aid has been limited and non-governmental organisations have established only token presences. There has also been little progress in the prosecution of those responsible for the drilling mishap. It took the police nine months to complete their investigation but the case has yet to go to trial. Conspicuously, only individual employees and contractors, not the company, are being probed as suspects.

     John Aglionby 

    © Financial Times

  • Slimy business; Java’s unstoppable mudflow

    FARMERS tilling the fields of Java, the world’s most populous island, have long known that the gods give and they take away. Java’s volcanic soil is astonishingly fertile but, like the rest of Indonesia, alarmingly prone to seismic activity. An earthquake that struck the eastern island of Sumbawa on November 25th killed at least three people.

    But the calamity that has befouled a swathe of semi-industrial farmland in east Java was, by most accounts, a man-made mess. In May last year Lapindo Brantas, an energy company, was drilling for natural gas when it accidentally opened a fissure in the ground. Torrents of hot, toxic mud began to flow. It has been flowing ever since, inundating 11 villages and swamping schools, factories, farms and roads in a 2.5 square mile (6.5 square km) zone. A network of earthen dams and levees holds back a lake of oily grey muck. Some is being pumped into a river and out to sea, despite the risk of contamination from heavy metals and chemicals in the mud.

    Efforts to staunch the flow have ranged from the ambitious to the ludicrous. Hundreds of concrete balls linked by steel cables were air-dropped into the hole, to no good effect. A group of Javanese mystics, offered a cash reward by local authorities to plug the abyss using supernatural powers, fared no better. Various experts have offered advice on how to divert or disrupt the volcano, which has spewed out an estimated 1 billion cubic feet (28m cubic metres) of mud. Japanese scientists have proposed building a 130-foot (40-metre) dam, reasoning that the weight of the exposed mud, which hardens as it dries, would eventually stem the flow. Nobody knows if or when it would stop of its own accord.

    A hand-painted banner across an abandoned strip of toll-road offers its own succinct formula: “Lapindo + Government = Madness”. Many are angry at the government’s sluggish response to the disaster, which has displaced some 16,000 people. Hundreds are still living in a makeshift camp. The local economy has collapsed. Factories and farms have been inundated, and the vital toll-road to the port of Surabaya closed. To ease the appalling traffic a military airport in Malang, a town to the south, has opened to civilian flights.

    Apportioning blame for the disaster has been tricky. Lapindo argued the mudflow was caused by an earthquake that struck central Java two days earlier, a theory pooh-poohed by most geologists. After much dithering, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia’s president, ordered the company to pay $412m to the afflicted. But inundated villagers get just 20% now, and the rest within two years.

    Mr Yudhoyono may be influenced by Lapindo’s majority shareholder, the diversified family-owned Bakrie Group. At the time of the disaster, its patriarch, Aburizal Bakrie, was the economics supremo in Mr Yudhoyono’s cabinet, having backed his presidential campaign in 2004. Mr Bakrie described the mudflow as a natural disaster that “nothing can prevent”. Perhaps to escape liability, his group tried to sell Lapindo to obscure offshore buyers. But Indonesian regulators blocked the sale. Mr Bakrie has since moved, with no intended irony, to the post of co-ordinating minister for public welfare.

    © The Economist

  • Two Years On, a Mud Volcano Still Rages and Bewilders

    As a disastrous mud eruption on Indonesia’s Java Island marks its second anniversary, the unprecedented event continues to stir debate about whether it resulted from an exploratory gas well drilling accident or a distant earthquake and how long it will last. The mud volcano, nicknamed Lusi, has been disgorging mud at a rate of up to 150,000 cubic meters per day. Officials are struggling to contain the effluent within dikes that are regularly breached and built anew farther out.

    In November 2006, ground deformation near the volcano ruptured a natural gas pipeline, killing 13 people. Lusi’s mud has engulfed 750 hectares, destroying the homes of more than 30,000 people as well as factories and farms. “Sadly, it’s not about simple technical problems anymore. It’s more [about] economic and social and political problems,” says Satria Bijaksana, a geophysicist at Institut Teknologi Bandung.

    Lapindo Brantas, the oil and gas exploration company that operated the ill-starred gas well, and the government have promised compensation to landowners, but it has been slow in coming. Hundreds of families are still living in temporary shelters. In two separate cases, Indonesian courts have ruled the eruption a natural disaster, absolving Lapindo Brantas of liability.

    Ivan Valentina Agung, a lawyer for Walhi, an Indonesian environmental group that filed one of the suits, says the group is appealing to a higher court in hopes of getting Lapindo Brantas to take responsibility for environmental rehabilitation.

    For scientists, Lusi is an intriguing specimen. A flurry of papers refines previous work on the eruption’s dynamics and offers insights into the evolution of mud volcanoes. “This is a great opportunity. Nobody knows how other mud volcanoes looked when they were first appearing,” says Adriano Mazzini, a geologist at the University of Oslo.

    There is general agreement on the sequence of events. On 27 May 2006 at 5:54 a.m. local time, a magnitude-6.3 earthquake struck near Yogyakarta, in central Java. Between 5 and 8 a.m. the following day, Lapindo Brantas’s gas well, which was being drilled 250 kilometers to the east near the town of Sidoarjo, began to flood. Workers shut the well’s blowout preventer to keep the fluid from gushing out the top. They noted that pressure inside the well rose rapidly before gradually subsiding. Early in the morning of 29 May, mud began burbling out of the ground about 150 meters away.

    In a February 2007 article in GSA Today, Richard Davies, a geologist at the University of Durham, U.K., and colleagues claimed that the drillers penetrated a porous limestone formation about 2800 meters below the surface, inadvertently tapping into a highly pressurized aquifer. The borehole’s casing didn’t extend deep enough to protect rock from cracking under the pressure when the blowout preventer was shut, he concluded. Water then channeled its way to the surface, bringing mud with it (Science, 2 February 2007, p. 586).

    That’s not how Mazzini and his colleagues see it. In the 30 September 2007 issue of Earth and Planetary Science Letters, they argued that the region’s geological structures, pressurized hydrocarbon deposits, common in the region, and a seismic fault created conditions “perfect for a mud volcano.” The only thing missing was a trigger, Mazzini says. The drilling might have contributed, he says, but he believes a more important factor was that the Yogyakarta earthquake reactivated the fault. At roughly the same time Lusi broke, mud also erupted from eight fissures along a 100-kilometer stretch of the fault line. “I don’t think this is a coincidence,” he says.

    Global Positioning System (GPS) data and an obvious kink in a rail line show that ground along the fault has shifted up to half a meter since the Yogyakarta earthquake. But Michael Manga, a geologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied how earthquakes trigger distant volcanic eruptions, contends that the quake was too small and too far away from the fault to influence it. In recent decades, he says, “there were many earthquakes that were both closer and bigger and by any measure more likely to have triggered an eruption.”

    In a paper published online on 5 June in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, Manga, Davies, and colleagues suggest that the fault is likely to be shifting in response to the movement of vast amounts of material to the surface. The mechanism is not clear. Co-author Rudi Rubiandini, a petroleum engineer at the Institut Teknologi Bandung, says the analysis “makes every other reason [for the eruption] impossible.” Most earth scientists agree that the well must have had some effect, says James Mori, a seismologist at Kyoto University in Japan. But he says researchers can’t determine whether the volcano would have formed without the drilling.

    While sympathizing with Lusi’s victims, geologists say they relish the rare opportunity to study a mud volcano’s birth and evolution. GPS and satellite-based interferometric synthetic aperture radar data indicate that the surface near the volcano’s vent is collapsing into a funnel shape, characteristic of sand draining from the top bulb of an hourglass. Davies and colleagues concluded in a paper published online on 21 May in Environmental Geology that between June 2006 and September 2007, the funnel’s center sank at about 4 centimeters per day, which in 3 years would produce a sag of 44 meters. They also report that areas outside the funnel are rising, probably due to movement of the fault.

    Scientists are puzzling over other phenomena as well. Since March 2007, the flow has periodically stopped for hours or days only to resume with its previous vigor. The likely explanation, Davies says, is that the weight of mud at the surface is collapsing the vent deep underground. Pressure backs up until it breaks through the blockage. In addition, there have been 88 minieruptions of water and methane where the ground is subsiding. Rubiandini believes the subsidence is cracking open pressurized gas pockets. And along the fault, geysers of water have suddenly shot up in the middle of yards, rice paddies, and even within factories, probably due to the rearrangement of subsurface plumbing.

    “The volcano is taking on a life of its own,” Davies says. How long this will go on, he says, is anybody’s guess.

    Unstoppable

    The mud volcano Lusi is unique in its longevity and the volume of material ejected. It may also be setting records for the number or failed attempts to plug it. Immediately after the 29 May 2006 eruption, Lapindo Brantas., the company whose exploratory drilling, some claim, triggered the eruption, pumped concrete into the well to try to stop the gush of hot, salty water from a subsurface aquifer. When that failed, the company brought in a consultant from Houston, Texas, who directed the drilling of two relief wells intended to intercept the original borehole and pump in high density drilling mud to plug the leak. This effort was abandoned when the wells were short of their target, also, reportedly, because Lapindo ran out of money.

    In February 2007, following a proposal from geophysicist Satria Bijaksana and two colleagues from Institut Teknologi Bandung, Lapindo Brantas started dropping into the vent clusters of concrete balls, 20 centimeters and 40 centimeters in diameter, roped together with steel cables. The objective, Bijaksana says, was “to reduce the sheer volume of mud coming out of the vent to a manageable level.” This effort was abandoned after 398 of a planned 1000 clusters had been dropped; a government agency that took over management of the disaster concluded that the balls were having little effect.

    The only hope of plugging Lusi is to drill another relief well to plug the original well at a point below where it was breached, says Rudi Rubiandini, a petroleum engineer at Institut Teknologi Bandung. He estimates that the well would cost $70 t0 $100 million. But that is unlikely to happen, he says: “Our government now thinks this is a natural disaster and impossible to kill.”

    Dennis Normile

  • Lapindo Blamed for Mudflow in East Java

    A two-year-old mud volcano in East Java that has submerged six villages, displaced 12,000 families and inundated hundreds of hectares of land, was caused by drilling negligence rather than natural causes, according to new research by British and US academics.

    The research, seen by the Financial Times, provide the most conclusive findings to date that Lapindo Brantas, the oil and gas company drilling an exploratory well 150m from the eruption site, triggered the mudflow on May 29 2006. The mud is still flowing at more than 100,000 cubic metres a day – enough to fill 53 Olympic swimming pools.

    Lapindo, which has seen the report, acknowledges it made significant mistakes less than a day before the eruption, but says these had no bearing on the subsequent mudflow. It says the incident was a natural disaster caused by tectonic activity unsealing a geological fault close to the drill site.

    The political fallout for President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono at legislative and presidential elections could be significant if prosecutors proceed to court and Lapindo is found liable.

    The government agreed to share the multi-billion dollar clean-up costs with Lapindo, which is owned by the family of Aburizal Bakrie, the chief welfare minister.

    Geologists Richard Davies of Britain’s Durham University and Michael Manga of the University of California at Berkeley in the US said they were “98 percent certain” that Lapindo was responsible. “In geology you can rarely be 100 per cent certain about anything,” Dr Davies said. “There are so many unlikely coincidences – Lapindo was either the unluckiest drilling company anywhere in the world ever, or they caused the disaster.”

    The academics concluded that the disaster began with the drilling crew’s failure to detect for 90 minutes a “massive” influx of water and gas, known as a kick, into the 2,834m-deep drilling hole the day before the eruption. They say that by the time the hole had been closed to contain the kick, the pressure in the hole had risen so much that it exceeded the maximum allowable pressure and the sides fractured.

    Lapindo acknowledges that its personnel failed to detect the kick promptly, but says that the pressure in the bore never exceeded the maximum allowable.

    The company points to a 5.9-magnitude earthquake 250km to the south-west on May 27 as evidence of tectonic activity occurring at the time, suggesting that it opened the Watukosek fault, on which the drill site was located.

    “We’re trying to look for answers for what happened,” said Bambang Istadi, Lapindo’s former exploration manager and now the Bakrie Group’s senior vice-president for technical services.

    Dr Manga said there was no evidence of an escalation of tectonic activity over the previous year, that bigger earthquakes nearer the eruption site had not caused mud eruptions and that the fault would have been more likely to close than open, based on the way the Earth’s plates moved to cause the Yogyakarta earthquake.

    Separately, an unpublished analysis carried out for the Indonesian police and seen by the FT points to potentially crucial errors in Lapindo’s pressure calculations.

    Harry Eddyarso, who has 25 years of worldwide drilling experience, was commissioned by the Indonesian police to analyse the data submitted by the companies involved in the drilling.

    “I’m 100 per cent certain Lapindo is to blame,” he said. “They made one mistake after another.” The police have publicly accused Lapindo of responsibility for the mud slide but prosecutors have declined to proceed to court, citing reports from scientists who have attributed the mud flow to natural causes.

    Last year the Bakrie Group bought the 32 percent stake in Lapindo owned by Medco Energi, Indonesia’s largest private energy company, in exchange for Medco withdrawing arbitration proceedings against Lapindo.

    The government said last week it was focusing on cleaning up the mess and helping the victims.

    John Anglionby 

    © Financial Times

  • Confronting evidence questions cause of mud eruption disaster

    Devastation from a mud erupting volcano on the Indonesian island of Java is not caused by an earthquake as previously thought, claims a Curtin University of Technology geologist in a paper published in the current issue of Geology.

    The Lusi mud volcano has erupted unabated for over two years, flooding 11 villages and displacing over 40,000 people in East Java.   Curtin researcher Mark Tingay, whilst working for the University of Adelaide, uncovered evidence of unsafe drilling practices prior to the eruption.  As a result he questions the theory that the 2006 earthquake which triggered the flow is the direct cause of this large scale disaster.

    In his paper titled “Triggering of the Lusi mud eruption: Earthquake versus drilling initiation” Post Doctoral Fellow and lead author, Tingay explains the magnitude of the disaster and addresses the questions it provokes.

    “The May 2006 mud flow from the Lusi volcano caused unprecedented damage by flooding an area of seven square kilometres to depths of 20 metres over a two year period.  Although some scientists and the Indonesian government believe the mud flow was triggered by the Yogyakarta earthquake that occurred 250 km away and two days before the eruption, this earthquake is calculated to be too small in magnitude to have caused such devastation,” Dr Tingay said.

    “Earthquakes have triggered events like this before, however the Yogyakarta earthquake was at least ten times too small to have triggered such a disaster, whilst the well that was drilled only 200 metres away from the volcano is the more likely cause.”

    Tingay claims that the skipping of two planned casing points during drilling of the Banjar Panji-1 (BJP-1) gas well meant that the borehole was not properly reinforced and thus vulnerable to a drilling accident known as a ‘kick’.

    “The BJP-1 gas exploration well, located 200 metres from the eruption suffered several drilling problems, including a large ‘kick’, during which we calculate pressures in the well were sufficient to fracture the rocks and create fluid flow pathways to the surface,” Dr Tingay said.

    “The hazardously narrow drilling window in the BJP-1 well, together with the significant deviation from planned protective casing design, are widely regarded as unsafe drilling practices. Indeed, it is possible that this disaster could have been avoided had protective casing been set as planned.”

    Tingay and his co-authors provide a quantitative discussion of the long-running debate on whether the mud eruption was triggered by natural or anthropological events, with the owner of the BJP-1 well potentially facing damage costs estimated to be in the vicinity of US$420 million dollars if found to be negligent.

    “Seventeen people have died as a result of the eruption and around 40,000 are now permanently displaced as mud rises at rates of 100,000 cubic metres a day.  That’s the equivalent of over 50 Olympic swimming pools a day,” Dr Tingay said.

    The Lusi mud flow could continue flowing for over 10 years with the strong possibility that further problems will arise as a result of the area around the disaster area rapidly sinking.

    The study was conducted in collaboration with Dr Oliver Heidbach of Karlsruhe University, Germany, Professor Richard Davies of Durham University, UK and Dr Richard Swarbrick of GeoPressure Technology, UK.

    Tingay’s paper can be viewed on the Geological Society of America site: http://www.gsajournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-toc&issn=0091-7613&volume=36&issue=8

    Contact:  Mark Tingay, Department of Applied Geology, Curtin, 08 9266 7097, [email protected]

  • PT Lapindo Brantas Makes Things Clear as Mud in Indonesia

    On May 29, 2006, PT Lapindo Brantas, an Indonesian energy company, was drilling a wildcat well, the Banjar-Panji-1.

    The driller had struggled through 2,500 feet of clays, underlain by gritty sands and volcaniclastics, and decided to drill ahead into porous limestone below 9,000 feet without stopping to set casing. That was a mistake. At about 5 a.m., a fissure opened about 600 feet from the wellhead, and steam, water, hydrogen sulphide, and methane began to escape. Shortly afterwards, hot viscous mud began to flow rapidly from the fissure. It has been flowing ever since, taking with it homes, factories, livelihoods, crops, roads, railways, and reputations, and creating a huge industrial scandal that will have serious repercussions.

    The Banjar well is one of the most environmentally destructive oil and gas wells ever drilled. The toxic mud has been flowing for 18 months now – and could flow for decades to come – at rates of up to 150,000 cubic meters per day. To date it covers at least 2.5 square miles with a billion cubic feet of mud that is quickly turning into mudstone.

    Lapindo Brantas was operating the well on behalf of its two partners: Santos, Australia’s third-largest oil and gas company, and Medco Energi of Indonesia. The well’s target was natural gas deposits in the Sidoarjo area of eastern Java, an area characterized by mud volcanoes. And the fact that Java is the most densely populated island on earth is what makes the Banjar well’s toxic mud volcano so destructive.

    The already horrific catalogue of damage continues to grow. The mud has displaced 13,000 people from their homes. It has inundated 11 towns, 30 schools, 25 factories, a national toll road, and the state-owned Sidoarjo-Pasuruan railway line. It has buried rice paddies and shrimp farms. (Sidoarjo was the second largest shrimp-producing town in the country.) It has also shut down one of east Java’s key industrial hubs with a slow-moving tsunami of hot, sticky, smelly mud that hardens to rock as it dehydrates and cools. It caused a Pertamina-owned gas pipeline to rupture and explode, killing 11. Environmental damage is estimated at between $5 billion and $10 billion.

    If this had happened on the edges of a city, the political response would have been immediate. But these are rural Indonesians, and since they have no money, and therefore no political voice or leverage in post-Suharto Indonesia, they stay displaced, uncompensated, and, until recently, ignored.

    A network of levees and dams has been erected to contain the mud, but have not been successful. Some sludge is pumped into the Porong River, but this has not been successful either; much of the sludge is insoluble and sits in the river in blocks. The rest is rapidly silting up the river and its delta and affecting its flow, causing flooding.

    The mud, containing a dangerous cocktail of benzene, toluene, xylene, heavy metals, ammonia, and sulphur dioxide, is rendering the river lifeless and its estuary barren. The government has proposed channelling the mud to the sea by canal, but this has some obvious drawbacks and has not been tried (yet).

    Other methods to contain the flow have been tried. The national government’s response team air-dropped 1,500 large concrete balls connected by steel chains into the fissure. But that only made the mud flow faster. Japanese contractors proposed building a high-pressure pipeline to divert the mud to the coast for land reclamation. Local authorities brought together 50 mystics to use their supernatural powers to stop the mudflow, for an $11,000 prize. In another bizarre twist, Lapindo Brantas funded production costs for a 13-episode television soap opera called “Digging a Hole, Filling a Hole” to highlight and dramatize stories of the company’s heroism. Needless to say it was not a big hit.

    More recently, the Japan Bank for International Cooperation offered loans of $110 million to build a 130-foot high containment dam around the mudflow, on the theory that the weight of dammed mud would eventually cut off the flow.

    The technical post mortem appears straightforward: Lapindo Brantas’s drill bit penetrated an overpressured reservoir, causing hydrofractures to propagate outwards from the uncased hole and upwards into the overlying seal, rapidly entraining mud, gas, and water to the surface under high pressure. Unfortunately for the victims, the technical explanation is the only thing about this disaster that is straightforward. The rest would give Kafka nightmares.

    Perhaps the drama’s most surreal aspects concern Lapindo Brantas and its owner Aburizal Bakrie, one of Asia’s richest men who also happens to be a senior executive of Golkar (the ruling party) and the former minister for economics. He’s also currently the ironically titled Minister for the People’s Welfare, a financial backer of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s 2004 election campaign, and one of the vice president’s closest friends. (Bakrie was closely tied to the former Indonesian dictator, Suharto. In the 1990s, those ties helped him to obtain a substantial ownership stake in Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, the U.S. mining outfit that operates the massive Grasberg mine in West Papua. Bakrie sold the Freeport stake in 1997.) Rather than resign his portfolio, Bakrie has tried to convince the government that Lapindo Brantas was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, an innocent witness to a natural disaster. On two occasions he has tried to sell Lapindo Brantas to escape liability, but has been blocked by the financial regulator. The first proposed sale was for $2 to an unnamed offshore company. The second, for $1 million, was to a U.S.-based outfit run by American friends of the family.

    Recently, partner Medco Energi accused Lapindo Brantas of gross negligence in the operation of the Banjar-Panji-1 well. Shortly after that bombshell, the police opened a criminal investigation into the actions of 13 senior managers and engineers at Lapindo Brantas.

    Until recently, Lapindo Brantas was allowed to choose, on a purely voluntary basis, how, why, and whether to compensate those people and businesses affected by the mudflow. It offered some families payments of up to $540 to cover two years’ displacement rental, $60 in moving costs, and $35 per month for food, if they agreed to free Lapindo Brantas from any further liability.

    Most residents rejected the offer, preferring to keep their options open. The company also claimed it was spending $2.4 million per day on efforts to stop or divert the mud, but this was subsequently found to actually be just under $300 per day. Recently, Indonesia’s President Yudhoyono issued a decree ordering the company “to bear all costs and repercussions” of the disaster, and pay compensation to those displaced. But since the decree has no legal consequence, it became apparent that this was another Kafka-esque way to avoid paying anything to anyone. The government has tried to minimize the political damage by setting aside $127 million from the state budget for compensation payments. But the applications are to be screened by a 50-person committee!

    Politicians are outraged because it appears that the government is bankrolling Lapindo Brantas and the Bakries. Citizens are skeptical that they will ever see any of the money.

    Many analysts predict that the Bakrie Group will simply resort to bankruptcy rather than foot any of the multi-billion dollar clean-up and compensation costs. They are money men, not oil men, and won’t lose any sleep if this forces them out of the oil and gas business for good. It is the prudent operators in Indonesia, trying to conduct their activities safely and with a commitment to the country, who will have to live with the aftermath.

    All of which is music to the ears of law firms that specialize in class-action suits. There are legal precedents for hearing offshore class actions in Australia when Australian companies are involved. So look out, Santos. Although it is only an 18 percent non-operating partner in the project, Santos is the only solid target in this whole sorry saga. The company has set aside about $60 million in its current budget to cover liability arising from the mudflow. But litigation experts in Australia believe that amount could underestimate Santos’s liability by as much as two orders of magnitude.

    Bret Mattes

    Sumber: http://www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm?aid=651

  • New Indonesia Calamity, A Mud Bath, Is Man-Made

    It started as a natural gas well. It has become geysers of mud and water, and in a country plagued by earthquakes, volcanoes and tsunamis another calamity in the making, though this one is largely man-made.

    Eight villages are completely or partly submerged, with homes and more than 20 factories buried to the rooftops. Some 13,000 people have been evacuated. The four-lane highway west of here has been cut in two, as has the rail line, dealing a serious blow to the economy of this region in East Java, an area vital to the country’s economy. The muck has already inundated an area covering one and a half square miles. And it shows no signs of stopping.

    The mud is rising by the hour, and now spewing forth at the rate of about 170,000 cubic yards a day, or about enough to cover Central Park.

    Foreign companies, environmental groups and political observers are now watching closely to see whether the government will hold the company that drilled the well accountable for the costs of the cleanup, which could easily reach $1 billion. The company is part of a conglomerate controlled by Aburizal Bakrie, a cabinet member and billionaire who was a major contributor to the campaign of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

    The disaster occurred as the company, Lapindo Brantas, drilled thousands of feet to tap natural gas and used practices that geologists, mining engineers and Indonesian officials described as faulty. But as the liabilities have escalated, Lapindo was sold — for $2 — last month to an offshore company, owned by the Bakrie Group, and many fear it will declare bankruptcy, allowing its owners to walk away.

    Mr. Bakrie declined to be interviewed. A spokeswoman for Lapindo, Yunawati Teryana, said that it was too early to conclude that Lapindo had acted negligently. She noted that some geologists had said that this was a natural disaster, a natural mud volcano, perhaps set off by seismic activity in the area.

    Government officials and company engineers are not hopeful that they can contain the problem. The government plans to pump the mud into the Porong River, which flows into the sea 20 miles north of here.

    ”It will be the death of the ecosystem around that area,” said Amien Widodo, an environmental geologist who teaches at the November 10 Institute of Technology in Surabaya. There is debate whether the mud is toxic. But the sheer volume alone will smother just about everything in its path, he said.

    The area’s commerce has been devastated. ”We are angry because we were living comfortably in our own home and now we are forced to leave,” Reni Matakupan said as she stood here looking across 200 yards of mud at her family’s factory, DeBrima, which was filling with mud.

    The problems began in late May when the company had reached about 9,000 feet, Mr. Widodo said. It continued to drill to this depth even though it had not installed what is known as a casing around the well to the levels required under Indonesian mining regulations, and good mining practices, Mr. Widodo said. The company experienced problems with the drilling that led to a loss of pressure in the well. That is when the mud started seeping in from the sides of the unprotected well bore, at a depth of about 6,000 feet.

    The mud was stopped by cement plugs that the company had inserted into the well hole. The mud then sought other avenues of escape, eventually breaking through the earth, and creating mud volcanoes.

    If the proper casing had been in place, the mud would not have entered the well, and would not have discovered these other avenues to the surface, said Mr. Widodo, a conclusion supported by mining engineers. Several Western and Indonesian mining engineers spoke about the matter, some offering graphs and mining details that have not been made public, but only on the condition that they not be identified, for fear of running afoul of Mr. Bakrie, the billionaire company owner.

    There does not appear to be any government investigation into what set off the eruptions. After the first eruptions, in late May, the police in Sidoarjo, the district at the center of the disaster, began an investigation, but it appears to have languished. ”I am not confident that anyone will ever be prosecuted,” said H. Win Hendrarso, the regent for Sidoarjo, choosing his words carefully. In an interview in his high-ceilinged office, Mr. Hendrarso, who was elected a year ago, said he had no authority to investigate. Any investigations would have to be by the central government in Jakarta, he said.

    ”I just want Lapindo to take responsibility,” he said. But Lapindo no longer exists, and the company to which it has been sold may not have any assets. Last month, Lapindo’s parent company announced that it was selling Lapindo for $2 to Lyte Ltd., a company that is registered in the offshore Island of Jersey. The majority shareholder in the parent company is the Bakrie Group, and the Bakrie Group is also the sole owner of Lyte, according to public documents.

    The Bakrie Group is owned by Aburizal Bakrie, and his brothers. Lapindo’s parent company, Energi Mega Persada, said in an official securities filing that it was selling Lapindo because of the huge costs it faced in cleaning up after the mud flow, and it was better to use its assets for its other oil and gas projects.

    An Energi spokesman, Herwin Hidayat, said the Bakrie Group remained committed to cleaning up the mud, through Lyte. He declined to say what assets Lyte had, if any. He said it was a ”functioning company.” He declined to give any examples of any business that it had done.

    A concern now is whether Lyte, which has been renamed Bakrie Oil & Gas, will declare bankruptcy, which seems inevitable. ”That’s what I’m afraid of,” said Mr. Hendrarso. If the Bakrie Group does not pay, the Indonesia government will be left with the bill, officials said.

    Raymond Bonner and Muktita Suhartono 

    © New York Times

  • Mud volcano ‘on brink of collapse’

    The world’s largest mud volcano that has been erupting continuously since 2006 is beginning to show signs of “catastrophic collapse”, according to geologists who have been monitoring it and the surrounding area.

    The volcano – named Lusi – has already devastated homes and businesses in Sidoarjo, East Java, Indonesia, displacing around 10,000 people and killing 14.

    Now scientists say that the land near the central vent could sag by up to 146 metres in the next decade. In March, the scientists observed drops of up to 3 metres in one night. Most of the subsidence in the area around the volcano is more gradual, at around 0.1cm per day.

    “It is starting to show signs that the central part is undergoing a more catastrophic collapse,” said Prof Richard Davies, a geologist at Durham University.

    “The fact that the whole area is collapsing means there are probably new faults forming. These faults are new pathways for fluids to seep up to the surface. We’ve never really seen a mud volcano develop so quickly.”

    The team have monitored the subsidence using fixed GPS stations which are able to record very accurate ground movements by communicating with satellites. They reported their results in the journal Environmental Geology.

    Last year, the Indonesian authorities began a desperate plan to drop 2,000 concrete balls into Lusi’s central vent in an effort to stem the flow. Davies watched the operation, which went on for 2 months.

    “What happened was they dropped them and never saw them again,” he said. “It just gobbled them up.”

    Since it began spewing noxious mud and gasses on May 29 2006, Lusi has blanketed an area of around 7 cubic kilometres, covering 10,426 houses, 35 schools, 65 mosques and one orphanage. The advancing mud is now contained behind human-engineered dykes.

    The central collapse may be good news because it will make room for more mud at the surface and so take the pressure off the dykes. But subsidence around the submerged zone will have more impact on the local community.

    A bridge that developed cracks has already had to be dismantled, railway tracks have been moved out of line and in November 2006, 13 people were killed in a gas blast caused by an underground pipe rupturing.

    Davies does not believe there is any way to stop Lusi now. “I think now the system has become so big … the plumbing system is so complex you couldn’t hope to stop it.”

    James Randerson

    Sumber: The Guardian

  • Mining firm blamed for mud flooding: report

    A police probe into the cause of the “mud volcano” that has made 15,000 people homeless in Indonesia’s East Java reportedly points to negligence by a mining company.

    Mud began to flow out of an exploratory gas drilling well operated by Pt Lapindo Brantas in May, last year. The mud has since flooded about 600 hectares of land and submerged whole villages.

    Kompas newspaper quotes East Java police chief Herman Suryadi Sumawiredja as saying experts believe there is a link between the mud flow and the activities of the well.

    He says police have questioned eight experts over the cause of the outflow. The police chief says the probe has concluded that the mud began to break out to the surface because of negligence by PT Lapindo Brantas during drilling at the well.

    The police have declared 13 people as suspects in the case, all of whom are executives of PT Lapindo Brantas or field workers. Their indictments are still being prepared.

    Kompas also quotes Indonesian Geologists Association head Andang Bachtiar as saying Lapindo’s use of mud to offset fluid coming out from the well was of a wrong density and caused the shaft to crack.

    An oil and gas expert from the Bandung Institute of Technology, Rudi Rubiandini, says the company used the regulatory steel casing to drill the well only up to a depth of 3,600 feet and dispensed with its use for the remaining 5,700 feet.

    Sumber: ABC News Online

  • Volcano of mud makes 50,000 homeless

    Campaigners say drilling by energy firm caused huge eruption, which has already killed 13 in Indonesia.

    The people of Sidoarjo gathered to say prayers this week. Beside a noxious sea of shifting grey mud they asked for help to rebuild their lives and for deliverance from further encroachment by the methane-spitting sludge.

    Already 13 people from this district in the east of the Indonesian island of Java have lost their lives to the world’s largest mud volcano, and a further 50,000 have been made homeless. Every day as the volcano continues to spew forth hot mud, more people and their villages are threatened. Schools and factories have had to be moved.

    An Indonesian court says this is a natural disaster. Yet human rights campaigners, as well as a team of scientists from Durham University, say the mud volcano that has been named Lusi was triggered by a gas-drilling operation two years ago. What gives this story an added twist is that the company is owned by the family of the country’s richest man, who also happens to be Indonesia’s Welfare Minister.

    The images of Lusi are nothing short of remarkable. The area at the very centre of the volcano has been surrounded by 20m-high concrete walls erected by the authorities to try to stem the flow. But already, the area now covered by the splurging mess totals more than 1,500 acres.

    Worse still, there are signs that the entire area is sinking and forming a huge crater. “The centre is falling by 4cm a day, which amounts to around 14m a year,” said Professor Richard Davies, head of a team from Durham University which has studied the volcano. “Sidoarjo is a populated region and is collapsing as a result of the birth and growth of Lusi. This could continue to have a significant environmental impact on the surrounding area for years to come.” He said the plunging volcano could cause other fractures and faults within the landscape and even begin to start shifting the course of rivers.

    Professor Davies said his team was 99 per cent certain that the volcano had been triggered by gas drilling in the region two years ago. He said it appeared workers from the Lapindo Brantas company had drilled to more than 3,000 metres and tapped into a water-bearing aquifer that was located beneath a seam of mudstone. The effect had been to release the pressure in the aquifer, causing the water to push out through the mudstone, creating a volcano of mud.

    That initial eruption two years ago this week killed 13 people and inundated 12 villages with a flood of mud. Every day since the volcano has continued to produce between 50,000 and 150,000 cubic metres of mud – enough to fill 60 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

    Yet the people of Sidoarjo say they have received barely any help or compensation from the government or Lapindo Brantas, which is owned by the family of the billionaire government minister Aburizal Bakrie. While thousands live in makeshift shanties waiting for help and refusing to move, the company this week took out advertisements in newspapers proclaiming its “social commitment” to the area but insisting experts believe the volcano was a natural phenomenon.

    Last month, the company stopped giving out food rations to displaced villages and said they should accept the compensation that had been offered. The homeless insist instead that they be given a lump sum to build new homes. “They can’t live there for ever. They should immediately submit documents and accept the compensation,” said a company spokeswoman, Yuniwati Teryana.

    Last year the authorities ordered the company to pay more than £220m in compensation and for work to halt the spread of the mud. But campaigners say only residents in four of the villages affected by the mud were eligible for compensation and that, of those people, only 20 per cent have so far received any money from the oil and gas giant.

    Campaigners say the government is unwilling to challenge the company to do more. No one has been charged with any crime in relation to the volcano. Chalid Muhammad, who heads a campaign group, the Movement to Promote Justice for the Lapindo Victims, said: “The government only needs to have the political will and the political courage to push the company to pay compensation.”

    All the while, as the people of Sidoarjo pray for help and as Lapindo Brantas continues to deny responsibility for what happened, the world’s largest mud volcano continues to spew mud and grow. Every single day.

    Andrew Buncombe, Asia Correspondent

    Sumber: The Independent