Tens of thousands of Indonesian villagers battling for compensation after a mud volcano swamped their homes have received a boost with a panel of international scientists concluding that exploratory drilling for gas was responsible.
Leading geologists assessing the eruption of toxic mud, which has continued for more than two years, overwhelmingly concluded it was caused by the drilling of a gas well by energy company Lapindo Brantas.
Scientists for the company, which is indirectly owned by the family of Indonesia’s chief social welfare minister, Aburizal Bakrie, argued data showed an earthquake in Yogyakarta, 280km away and two days earlier, was the cause.
But at the conference of 74 petroleum geologists in Cape Town, South Africa, only three backed Lapindo Brantas, while 42 of the independent scientists agreed fresh evidence revealed the drilling was the cause.
The company has already been ordered to pay 4 trillion rupiah (US$437 million) in interim compensation by the government, but a police investigation is continuing to establish the source of the eruption that spews the equivalent of 53 Olympic swimming pools of mud daily.
In all, 36,000 people near the site in Sidoarjo, east Java, were displaced by the mud flow that has inundated 12 factories and two villages, and threatens a further 10.
All efforts to stem the flow that began in May 2006 have failed, including one attempt that involved dropping huge concrete spheres into the volcano’s mouth.
Earthen dykes 15m high were built to contain the bubbling sludge that now covers 640 hectares — an area equivalent to around 600 football pitches. Scientists fear the eruption could continue for decades.
At the American Association of Petroleum Geologists meeting last week, experts for both sides of the battle to establish liability put their cases for the first time.
New figures revealing pressure levels in the exploration well for the 24 hours leading up to the eruption of the volcano — known locally as Lusi — were released. Durham University’s Richard Davies, one of the world’s foremost experts on mud volcanoes, argued the readings pointed to a pressure build-up that caused fractures sparked by the nearby borehole.
“I remain convinced that drilling was the cause of the mud volcano. The opinion of the international scientists ... adds further weight to my conviction and the conclusions of many other leading scientists who have studied Lusi,” he said.
Claims by experts from the Indonesian drilling company that the earlier 6.3 magnitude earthquake had led to the fracture were dismissed. Other scientists said it was not sufficiently strong and too distant to cause the eruption.
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