A mud volcano that inundated dozens of villages was probably triggered by commercial gas drilling, research published in a respected scientific journal shows, contradicting an Indo-nesian government minister who insists it was a natural disaster.
"It is very likely" that the mud flow in Sidoarjo, eastern Java, which has spewed a million barrels of mud a day for eight months, is manmade, four researchers say in the February issue of the Geological Society of America's GSA Today.
Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie -- whose family controls the PT Lapindo Brantas drilling company at the center of the scandal -- has repeatedly claimed the geyser was sparked by a May 27 earthquake and that his company bears no financial liability.
But the British-based scientists believe drilling at a depth of more than 2km ruptured a highly pressurized pocket of hot gas and water which created fissures in a bed of porous limestone.
"Once initiated, the fractures would have propagated to the surface, driven by the deep pressure," it said.
"It would be highly coincidental for an earthquake-induced fracture to form 200m away from this well and provide the entire fracture network required for an eruption on the earth's surface," it says.
Since May, around 126,000m3 of sediment has gushed from the site. Around 11,000 people have been forced from their homes while four villages and 25 factories have been consumed by a 10m-layer of smelly gunk.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of
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