An Indonesian Catastrophe: A Man- Made Mud Bath.

I am standing thirty-five meters up, on top of a huge dyke, just a short, thirty-minute drive from Indonesia’s second largest city Surabaya. This massive dyke stretches ten kilometres either side of me and I am looking out over one of the largest environmental catastrophes that the world has ever seen, yet nobody here really wants to talk about it.

Directly in front of me stand dozens of concrete statues depicting forlorn victims all buried up to their necks in a sea of liquid mud. Just a few years ago, when these statues were erected as a protest, each stood at least ten meters high. In another few months, even they will disappear beneath the ever-rising tide.

On May 29th 2006, a rice paddy in eastern Java suddenly cleaved open and began spewing forth a tide of steaming mud, creating a disaster of what can only be described as one of biblical proportions. The tide began  during exploratory drilling for natural gas, and it has grown to be one of the largest mud volcanoes ever to have affected a populated area.

In less than a year the mudflow covered an area twice the size of Central Park in New York; roads, factories a major toll road and sizable villages all disappeared under a cascade of reeking muck. Twenty lives were lost and nearly 40,000 people to date have been displaced, with damages topping a whopping $2.7 billion. This once fertile valley that at one time housed sugar cane fields, rice paddies, fruit orchards, schools, mosques and factories are now submerged under a sea of brown stretching almost as far as the eye can see.

From deep within the earth, immense pressure constantly disgorges a massive cocktail of silicon infused brown mud, covering the surrounding land, which is sinking by as much as 40 feet a year and could subside to depths of more than 460 feet, taking with it even more villages that lie in its devastating path.

The tragedy of all of this is that no one seems to be able to stop it!

Many have tried, and to date, all have failed. This ‘ mud volcano’ continues day in, day out with no end in sight and experts say that the flow will persist for many years if not decades. It has driven thousands of people from their homes and forced the relocation of roads, bridges, a railway line as well as a major gas pipeline.

So, what actually caused this disaster?

Overwhelming evidence suggests that the drilling company, Lapindo Brantas, caused the disaster (The company is owned by the family of one of Indonesia’s richest and most influential men, Aburizal Bakrie) A spokesperson for Lapindo, when questioned says that it was itself a victim, blaming vibrations from a major earthquake that struck two days before, which consequently caused the mud eruption, even though its epicentre was 186 kilometres away.

On May 27th, 2006, (two days before the mudflow began), a devastating 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck Yogyakarta, a city 150 miles west of the drill site. At the time, Lapindo engineers had almost reached a new natural gas deposit nearly two miles below the surface.

Eight hours after the earthquake, the engineer’s hit what seemed to be their target; the carbonate formation. Immediately, something went wrong. The fluid used to maintain pressure in the drill hole suddenly disappeared; hours later, masses of liquid from the formation rushed back into the borehole.

Around 365 barrels of muddy water escaped the hole before the engineers, fearing a blowout, sealed it off.

 Even though this temporary operation to cap the well, the leaking fluid underneath continued to build.

The pressure eventually became so great as to induce its own uncontrolled version of fracking, cracking the surrounding rock and finding release nearby. The day after the well was sealed and two days after the earthquake, mud gurgled up about 500 feet from the drilling site.

After listening to new evidence about the eruption, 74 petroleum geologists, attending a  conference in Cape Town, South Africa in 2015, concluded that the drilling, and not the earthquake had been the cause.

They concluded that during the drilling process, the tunnel pierced a pressurized aquifer 9,000 feet underground. Experts on mud volcanoes now believe that the drilling and inadequate safeguards in the borehole set off the eruption of water, gas and mud that continues to flow ten years on at about 100,000 cubic meters a day.

“There is no question, the pressures in the well went way beyond what it could tolerate — and it triggered the mud volcano,” said Susila Lusiaga, a drilling engineer who was part of the Indonesian investigation team.

Since the first eruption in May 2006, after the initial hole was capped, there have been more than 90 other eruptions, most of them small but some explosive, said Jim Schiller, a political scientist at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia, who has published a study of the disaster.

In his report, he mentions the village of Renokenongo, which was buried during the biggest of these eruptions in November 2007. The weight of the sinking earth burst a major natural-gas pipeline, killing 13 workers and sending a huge fireball into the sky. He described what he called the horror-movie progress of the mud, which continues to burst from the ground at unexpected times and places. “I’ve got pictures of them popping up in people’s living rooms,” he said.

Siti Maimunah, an environmental advocate, said people who lived nearby have begun getting sick, with about 46,000 visiting clinics with respiratory problems since the eruption. The victims say compensation has been painfully slow, with only a portion of promised funds delivered to them. Sixty thousand people have now fled their homes and are forced to live in nearby shelters and in a marketplace.

This is a particularly forlorn class of displaced people who mostly fend for themselves because, as victims of what is being called “a man-made disaster”, they receive little assistance from the government or from international aid agencies.

The debate over responsibility has severely limited the payments, After paying out 20 per cent of a promised compensation package, Lapindo recently agreed to begin monthly payments equal to $2,500 to 8,000 families it said were eligible. But as part of the Bakrie family holdings, Lapindo’s fortunes have been severely affected by the current economic downturn and some pundits question whether the full amount will ever be paid.

While debate continues about what caused the disaster and where the compensation will come from, experts agree on one thing: The mud will probably continue to flow for a long, long time. And, even if the flow becomes so small it no longer needs management, it will probably be a geological feature for centuries to come.

Photography copyright; Paul v Walters.

Paul v Walters is the best selling author of several best selling novels and when he is not cocooned in sloth and procrastination in his house in Bali he scribbles for several international travel and vox pop journals. His latest offering, Asset will be released in late 2017.