SIDOARJO (LUSI) MUD VOLCANO IN INDONESIA: DAMAGE, VICTIMS AND BLAME

SIDOARJO MUD VOLCANO

Sidoarjo (Lusi) mud volcano, U.S. Geological Survey

Jawa Timur in East Java is the home of the the notorious Sidoarjo (Lusi) mud volcano, which actually a mud flow not a volcano. It has killed around 20 people and destroyed the homes of tens of thousands of residents since it began in 2006 and is still oozing mud. Data indicates the disaster is man-made: caused by drilling by the gas-exploration company Brantas Lapindo and not caused by an earthquake as Lapindo had claimed. As of 2015, nearly 40,000 people were displaced by the mud volcano , with damages exceeding $2.7 billion.

According to the New York Times: The mud erupted here 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. Unlike other disasters that torment Indonesia — earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis — this one continues with no end in sight, and experts say the flow of mud could go on for many years or decades. The steaming mud keeps bubbling up, spreading across the countryside, driving people from their homes, burying fields and factories. It has forced the relocation of roads, bridges, a railway line and a major gas pipeline. As the earth disgorges the mud and the lake of mud grows, the land is sinking by as much as 40 feet a year and could subside to depths of more than 460 feet just one hour’s drive from Indonesia’s second city, Surabaya, according to Richard Davies, a geologist at Durham University in Britain who is an expert on mud volcanoes. [Source: Seth Mydans, New York Times, December 18, 2008]

In late 2013, international scientists who had been monitoring the situation were reported as saying that the eruption of mud at Sidoardjo had was falling away quite rapidly and that the indications were that the eruption might cease by perhaps 2017, much earlier than previously estimated. The scientists noted that the system was losing pressure quite rapidly and had begun pulsing rather than maintaining a steady flow. The pulsing pattern, it was believed, was a clear sign that the geological forces driving the eruption were subsiding. [Source: Wikipedia]

The Sidoarjo mud volcano is still actively erupting. While the peak flow rates of 180,000 square meters have significantly declined, it remains a major geological hazard that is expected to flow for years to come. The volcano continues to extrude mud and gases, requiring constant monitoring. The mud sea covers roughly 7 square kilometers and has displaced residents from 19 villages in the Sidoarjo region. The sprawling area of the disaster is surrounded by levees. Subsidence (sinking ground) and mud spills regularly disrupt local highways, paddy fields, and nearby villages.

Websites and Sources on Volcanoes: USGS Volcanoes volcanoes.usgs.gov ; Volcano World volcano.oregonstate.edu ; Volcanoes.com volcanoes.com ; Wikipedia Volcano article Wikipedia , Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program volcano.si.edu operated by the Smithsonian has descriptions of volcanoes around the globe and a catalog of over 8,000 eruptions in the last 10,000 years.

Damage by the Indonesia Mud Volcano

Houses submerged by a Sidoarjo mudflow

The damage for the mud volcano was estimated to be in the billions of dollars. As of 2008 it had covered 10,426 houses, 35 schools, 65 mosques and one orphanage. A bridge that developed cracks was dismantled and railway tracks were moved out of line. At that time the advancing mud was largely contained behind human-engineered dykes. In November 2006, 13 people were killed in a gas blast caused by the rupturing of an underground pipe.

The seemingly endless torrent of hot, black sludge started oozing from a gaping hole near the country's second-largest city of Surabaya on May 29, 2006. At its peak Lusi spewed up to 180,000 cubic meters of mud per day. As of 2010, the Lusi mud volcano was spewing out about 100,000 tons of mud a day and was showing no signs of letting up. John M. Glionna wrote in the Los Angeles Times: Known as the Lusi mud volcano, its spread is so relentless — burping noxious gas, swallowing communities, killing 14 people and forcing the evacuations of 60,000 — that some say it could star in its own sci-fi thriller.” Out of “a series of fissures, marked by an ominous smoke plume, pump out 100,000 tons of mud. New chemical fires erupt from smaller, gas-seeping cracks in a vision from hell that has closed roads and demolished buildings. Since the flow erupted, 170 new gas bubbles have broken through the surface, spewing unsafe levels of methane. The fissures, where temperatures can reach 140 degrees, have led officials to warn against even lighting matches in the area. [Source: John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times, July 10, 2010 ||]

“The mudflow is slowly gobbling up the countryside. Now covering 2,000 acres, it's 65 feet deep in some places, submerging factories, schools, farms and a dozen villages. Indonesian officials have insisted that the deadly flow was the result of a natural disaster: an earthquake that struck 175 miles away just before the mud began its onslaught in 2006. But evidence from a team of independent U.S. and British geologists suggests that the mud volcano, like the British Petroleum oil disaster, was man-made, the result of a 2006 drilling accident at a nearby gas exploration site. And these geologists say they have no idea when the mudflow will stop, if ever. The accident, many here charge, is just the latest example of corruption and incompetence in the impoverished Southeast Asian nation's attempt to exploit its energy resources.” ||

Gray Ooze From the Sidoarjo Mud Volcano Engulfs Entire Villages

In September 2006, three months after the Sidoarjo Mud Volcano was launched, the Los Angeles Times reported: Nothing, it seems, can stop the mud. For more than three months, the hot, noxious goop has spewed up through a crack in the earth at a natural-gas exploration site, swamping everything in its path.The expanding, surreal gray lake with the stench of rotten eggs has enveloped more than 10 square miles of land in eastern Java, Indonesia's most densely populated island. The flow has forced 8,000 to 10,000 people from their homes, engulfed about a dozen factories, contaminated fish farms and intermittently closed a major highway. [Source: Joel Rubin and Dinda Jouhana, Los Angeles Times, September 9, 2006]

Confusion has reigned over how to stop it. An effort to drill a series of relief wells was slow to begin and has thus far failed. With the mud continuing to gush, emergency crews have scrambled to put up earthen barriers to contain and redirect the flow away from villages. Some of the dams already have been breached, and officials are running out of space.

Here the erupting mud of the Sidoarjo mudflow is beginning to truly resemble a volcano. This false-color image was taken on October 20, 2009 by the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA’s Terra satellite; Walls contain the mudflow to a rectangular region in the center of the image; The landscape beyond the walls is still covered in plants, which are red in this false-color image; Water, usually dark blue in this type of image, is silvery white from reflected sunlight; The bright squares on the right side of the image are shrimp farms, and the ribbon of white along the bottom of the image is the Kali Porong, a river; Reflecting sunlight also colors the outer edges of the mudflow silver and highlights the texture of the growing mound over the vent at the center of the volcano; The mound was not visible in an ASTER image acquired in late 2008

Nerves have frayed over the slow and uneven response to the crisis by government agencies and Lapindo Brantas, the politically connected company with a controlling stake in the exploration project. Frustration spilled over last week when displaced villagers set fire to a camp of tents used by Lapindo workers. Suyati, who, like many Indonesians, uses one name, watched anxiously for weeks as one of the barriers held the mud at bay — temporarily.

"It flew very fast, like a tsunami," said Suyati, 57, recalling the day last month when the pent-up mud surged though the barrier. "I was scared and I ran with my sick husband. My son and I had to carry him, because my husband is paralyzed. The mud was behind us.... It was hot and smelled very bad. We ran to the mosque, but the mud was very fast. All of a sudden it was up to my waist."

At the shore of the mud lake, white smoke billows ominously. Large bubbles burp at the center, marking the roughly 50-foot-wide crack, where temperatures reach about 140 degrees. Only rooftops and the tips of denuded trees poke above the surface of the mud, which is 20 feet deep in places.

Tests have found elevated levels of phenol, which can irritate human skin and cause breathing discomfort, according to a report by WALHI, a leading environmental group. There have been no reports of hospitalizations, although two people have died in accidents related to the mudflow: an emergency crew member reportedly caught in an explosion of a pent-up gas deposit and another run over by a bulldozer.

Most of the people whose houses have been inundated have taken refuge in the dreary storefronts of a recently built market, uncertain whether they will be able to return home. On a recent sweltering afternoon, a neighbor of Suyati's, Rois Haryanto, was trying to clear knee-high mud from his front yard while four young men he had hired worked inside. On the white wall of his home, Haryanto, 47, had scrawled, "Beware of Lapindo's henchmen." "I saw them on TV promising that they will reimburse everything, every little thing," he said angrily. "They promised that. That is why I still live here, with the mud. I don't want to go to the [market]. This is my house, and I want them to see that."

Concrete Balls Fail to Stop the Mud Volcano Eruption

In May 2008, James Randerson wrote in The Guardian, “The world's largest mud volcano is beginning to show signs of "catastrophic collapse", according to geologists who have been monitoring it and the surrounding area. 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." [Source: James Randerson, theguardian.com, May 29, 2008 */]

Location map of LUSI mud volcano near Sidoarjo Researchgate

“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. 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.*/

“In 2007, Indonesian authorities began a desperate plan to drop 2000 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." */

As the operation began, Ian MacKinnon wrote in The Guardian, “Scientists began dropping huge concrete balls chained together into the mouth of a mud volcano in a desperate attempt to staunch the relentless flow. The operation to lower 2,000 of the enormous balls, chained together in groups, into the mouth of the rupture has been postponed several times already. British experts who have closely monitored the mud volcano are sceptical about whether the effort will halt the outpouring of noxious gas, mud and boiling water that has been spewing at a rate of 1 million barrels every day for nine months. They fear the pressurised underground reservoir responsible for the sludge will find other fissures to the surface in possibly more dangerous or difficult areas. [Source: Ian MacKinnon, theguardian.com, February 22, 2007 |^|]

“The operation to lower the sets of concrete balls, each weighing up 400kg, into the rupture will begin slowly. It is hoped that the ball and chain set will be dropped to a depth of 100 metres with the aim of slowing the flow by up to 70 percent rather than halting it completely. However, Lapindo Brantas initially tried to staunch the flow by pumping mud and concrete into the mouth of the volcano. Eventually, the pressure of the mud burst from fissures around the plug. The hope is that the chained balls will move together and be more likely to lodge in a place where the friction will reduce the mud flow, which has already covered an area of 10 square kilometers to a depth of 10 metres. |^|

“However, Dr Richard Swarbrick, of the Durham-based consultancy GeoPressure Technology, does not believe the strategy will solve the problem of the flow, which could eventually cause the earth's crust to buckle under the weight. "I have no doubt that if the balls remain at a reasonable level they will slow the flow," he said. "The difficulty is that it will not solve the overall problem. "The risk is that if you check the event you will force the water and mud to come out somewhere else, and that could be a great deal more dangerous than managing it where it is now." |^|

Was the Mud Volcano Eruption Created and Exacerbated by Spirits?

The history of the Lusi mud eruption in Sidoarjo, East Java, Indonesia; May 2006, it was just a steam eruption at 200 meters distance from the exploration rig of the Banjarpanji-1 [3, 4]; July 2006, the surrounding area was covered with hot mud; May 2007 – September 2009, the inner embankment dam was built to keep hot mud within the crater area; But, since the end of 2009 hot mud has already covered the area of 642 hectares; Since March 2014 up to date, a phreatic steam eruption has dominated the Lusi eruption
Researchgate

The eruption of the Sidoarjo mud volcano raised questions by local about involvement of supernatural forces in it. As engineers and geologists struggled to control the massive mud flow by placing large concrete balls in it, some residents and traditional soothsayers argued that the disaster had been caused by angry spirits dwelling beneath the earth. According to these beliefs, the spirits had become disturbed and were responsible for the continuing eruption that buried villages, factories, roads, and farmland. [Source: Seth Mydans, New York Times, March 28, 2007]

As the mud continued to gush from the ground, eventually displacing thousands of people, researchers searched for ways to slow or stop the flow. One widely publicized effort involved dropping hundreds of giant concrete balls into the main vent in the hope that their weight and friction would reduce the volume of mud escaping to the surface.

While engineers viewed the project as an innovative attempt to manage the disaster, many local people remained skeptical. Among them was Chief Sergeant Sumarono, who relayed warnings from local soothsayers that the spirits living in the crater would be angered by the concrete balls. According to these traditional beliefs, the eruption itself was a sign of the spirits’ displeasure, and striking them with massive concrete objects would only provoke them further. Some fortune-tellers predicted that the intervention would lead to an even larger and more destructive outburst.

Lapindo Brantas, the Gas Company Behind the Mud Volcano

According to the New York Times: The steaming mud erupted from the ground on May 29, 2006, as Lapindo Brantas was drilling near the industrial district of Sidoarjo. Its tunnel pierced a pressurized aquifer 9,000 feet underground. Experts on mud volcanoes say the drilling and inadequate safeguards in the borehole set off the eruption of water, gas and mud that continues to flow, at about 100,000 cubic meters a day. [Source: Seth Mydans, New York Times, December 18, 2008]

John M. Glionna wrote in the Los Angeles Times: PT Lapindo Brantas, a company that owns a controlling stake in the project, is controlled by the family of Aburizal Bakrie, one of Indonesia's wealthiest men, who at the time of the rupture was the government's minister for people's welfare. The company has denied any connection to the mudflow, but it also has agreed to pay $400 million to compensate 10,000 families, as ordered by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Many of those people say they have received only one-fifth of their settlement. [Source: John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times, July 10, 2010 ||]

Andrew Marshall wrote in National Geographic: “A spokesperson for Lapindo explains compensation is delayed because claimants cannot provide adequate proof of home or land ownership, and maintains the company has already spent millions to house and feed victims. Claims will be fully paid within two years, she promises, adding that Lapindo has no legal obligation because the disaster's cause remains unproven. "We don't know yet whether this is our fault," she says. [Source: Andrew Marshall, National Geographic, January 2008]

Aerial view of the area affected by the e Sidoarjo mudflow in August 2013 environmentandsociety.org

“The politics surrounding the disaster are as muddy as the landscape. Bakrie, a billionaire, says the well had nothing to do with the catastrophe; he blames it on a powerful earthquake that struck Yogyakarta, 170 miles (270 kilometers) away, two days before the mud flood. He has yet to visit Lusi's victims. Just as well. Anger pervades a market where thousands of displaced villagers encamp. "If Bakrie comes here," one man says, slowly drawing his finger across his throat. Still, Bakrie enjoys the backing of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who and apparently opts not to alienate a fat-cat cabinet member by demanding his resignation.” [Ibid]

In 2009, According to the Los Angeles Times, “regional authorities halted their investigation of the mudflow, citing a lack of evidence to link Lapindo Brantas to the volcano's eruption. The Indonesian Supreme Court has also upheld a lower court's dismissal of a lawsuit by environmentalists blaming the company for the disaster. Meanwhile, Bakrie, 63, who many believe has aspirations to become president, has been chosen to lead a new joint secretariat likely to play an important role in determining government policy, including its focus on energy. But citing the new U.S. and British geologic evidence, activists have called for the inquiry to be reopened. "It's a national scandal," said Bambang Catur Nusantara, a regional director of the Indonesian Forum for the Environment. "The company is getting away with murder. And the government is doing nothing." ||

Evidence That the Gas Company Was Behind the Mud Volcano

According to the New York Times:Lapindo says that it was itself a victim, blaming vibrations from a major earthquake that struck two days earlier with an epicenter 186 miles away. After listening to new evidence about the eruption, 74 petroleum geologists attending an October conference in Cape Town concluded that the drilling had been the cause. 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, according to a report on the conference by Durham University. [Source: Seth Mydans, New York Times, December 18, 2008]

Lapindo Brantas says the mud volcano was triggered by a magnitude 6.3 earthquake that occurred 155 miles from the site two days earlier. Andrew Marshall wrote in National Geographic: “One study by an international team that included a Lapindo employee supported Bakrie's claim that the earthquake caused the mess. But Richard Davies of Durham University in England is dismissive. "One, the earthquake wasn't big enough and was too far away," he says. "Two, we have pretty good evidence for how drilling would have caused this incident." Davies' own studies concluded the eruption was triggered by the drilling and the attempt to control a huge influx of water and gas that fractured sections of the borehole. [Source: Andrew Marshall, National Geographic, January 2008]

John M. Glionna wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “In a paper published in the journal Marine and Petroleum Geology, U.S. and British researchers said their findings — funded by a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation — suggest that the disaster was caused when operators pulled the drill while the natural gas well was unstable. Co-author Michael Manga, a geology professor at UC Berkeley, said the pressure in the 2-mile-deep well created cracks in the earth that allowed seeping gas to push the mud to the surface. He said the mudflow can't be capped like the BP oil spill because the mud comes from a series of hard-to-contain fissures that also vent gas. "In 30 years, there have been many much larger and closer earthquakes, and none of them caused any mud eruptions," he said. "This quake was much too small and far away." [Source: John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times, July 10, 2010 ||]

“Company officials dispute that hypothesis. "We find that [the] claims are merely speculative and not based on any credible data," said Nurrochmat Sawolo, senior drilling adviser at Energi Mega Persada. The firm, owned by the Bakrie group, indirectly controls Lapindo Brantas. "Our study is based on the most definitive dataset from the drilling rig," he said. "This is a source of information that is completely automated, an unbiased set of recorded drilling parameters." Manga stands by his results. "My level of confidence is so strong that if I'm wrong, I should be fired," he said. "Our science is as good as it can be." Manga doesn't know when the mudflow will stop. "It can keep erupting, pretty much forever." ||

Sara Schonhardt of Associated Press wrote: “Scientists said they are almost certain the mud volcano was caused by faulty drilling of a gas exploration well. "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," Richard Davies, a geologist at Durham University in Britain, said. He was the lead author of a study published this week in the academic journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters that said his team was 99 percent sure that drilling pressures caused a fluid leakage that led to an "underground blowout." Lapindo noticed too late that an influx of water or gas entered the well after the drill was removed for the night, Davies said, adding "it is quite clear" the critical pressure was "more than the hole could withstand." [Source: Sara Schonhardt, Associated Press, June 10, 2008]

Victims of Indonesia's Mud Volcano

Describing what happened to villagers when the mud volcano began, Andrew Marshall wrote in National Geographic: “By dawn, the trickle that began to seep into the neighborhood during the night had become a scalding torrent. Mud surged into the modest house belonging to Sumitro, who manages a store in the Porong District of East Java. As it smothered furniture and filled rooms, Sumitro and Indayani, his wife, grabbed the kids and fled. "I knew the mud couldn't be stopped," he says. "My house was doomed." A dike protected Sumitro's neighborhood until November 2006, when the mud caused a gas pipeline to explode, killing 13 people. "I thought the end of the world had come," he recalls. In a way, it had. The explosion weakened the dike, exposing his neighborhood to the flow. Now, footprints of fleeing residents are baked into the mud of empty streets. Scavengers have stripped homes of roof tiles and wiring. The stink of sulfur hangs in the air. "Nothing left now," Sumitro says. "Only memories." [Source: Andrew Marshall, National Geographic, January 2008]

Reporting from Sidoarjo, the site of the mud volcano, John M. Glionna wrote in the Los Angeles Times: Indonesia — For four long years, Reni Sualeha has lived in the shadow of a monster, a menacing chemical flow of fetid gray mud that belches unchecked from the bowels of the earth near her home. Each day, she watches as mud and chemical fires demolish buildings, including one just down the road from Sualeha's tiny home. "It's not from this planet," she said of the volcano. [Source: John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times, July 10, 2010 ||]

“Wahyu Mulyanto and her family were driven from their home in 2006. "It was just so surreal to see our house swallowed by mud," she said. "It's hard to describe: From a small hole comes this mud that gradually swallows everything in its path: my house, my job, my life." || On a towering earthen wall built to contain the flow, a new economy capitalizes on the disaster. Hawkers peddle explanatory DVDs, sell snacks and offer tours to tourists who arrive by the busload. "This thing is world-famous," said hawker Muhammad Jafar, who lost his job when his factory was swallowed by the mud. "People want to come and see for themselves the power of nature."

“Some survivors have made the best of their plight. Sualeha showed off a makeshift stove in her yard that captures the oozing gas to heat water. "Look, the flame is blue," she said, flinching as she lighted the stove. She pointed to cracks in her home she believes were caused by the underground pressure. "Sometimes at night," she said, "when I smell the gas and think of what might happen, I shudder." Sualeha is no longer waiting for the government to save her. "I'm just a poor villager, but I can still read between the lines," she said. "The government is protecting a company run by one of its own.... What can you do?"

Villagers Affected by the Mud Volcano Largely Left to Fend for Themselves

Reporting from Renokenongo, Seth Mydans wrote in the New York Times, “Her children insist, so every week or two Lilik Kamina takes them back to their abandoned village to look at the mud. Hey, Mom, there’s our house, there’s the mango tree,” she said they shout. But there is nothing to see, only an ocean of mud that has buried this village and a dozen more over the past two-and-a-half years.[Source: Seth Mydans, New York Times, December 18, 2008]

Siti Maimunah, an environmental advocate, said people who lived nearby had begun getting sick, with about 46,000 visiting clinics with respiratory problems since the mud eruption. Ms. Siti, who is national coordinator for the Mining Advocacy Network of Indonesia, said the gas that emerged with the mud was toxic and possibly carcinogenic. “We worry that in the next 5 to 10 years people will face a second disaster with health problems,” she said.

The Indonesian government has said that it expects Lapindo to adequately reimburse all victims (the government itself had allocated more than US$210 million for the purpose in 2008 and 2009). The victims say compensation has been slow, with only a portion of promised funds delivered to them. Sixty-thousand people have fled their homes and many, like Ms. Lilik, now 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. So we live without hope,” said Ali Mursjid, 25, who was in college studying to be a teacher before the mud volcano made him destitute. “Nobody is willing to help us.” His village, Besuki, was only partly buried in mud, and it is now a ghost town of empty houses and hard, cracked mud where children fly kites and shout to hear their voices echo.

The debate over responsibility has severely limited the payments, said Elfian Effendi, executive director of Greenomics Indonesia, an environmental advocacy group. After paying out 20 percent of a promised compensation package, Lapindo agreed this month 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 has been severely affected by the current economic downturn and some experts question whether the full amount will ever be paid.

Since the first eruption in May 2006, there have been more than 90 others, 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.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.

The village of Renokenongo was buried during the biggest of these eruptions, in November 2007, when the weight of sinking earth burst a major natural-gas pipeline, killing 13 workers and sending a fireball into the sky. Ms. Lilik, 30, who teaches kindergarten, said the visits to the levee by her former village calm her children, Icha Noviyanti, 11, and Fiqhi Izzudin, 5. People say it’s not a good idea to take the children there, but I think the opposite,” she said. “I think it’s very important for them to see their home and express their anger. They throw rocks at the mud and shout, ‘Lapindo!’ ”

Cleaning Up and Containing Indonesia’s Mud Volcano

The government has made many attempts to contain or stop the mud, including dropping beach ball-sized concrete balls into its mouth and building dams to channel the sludge to sea. John M. Glionna wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “The government has been shouldering the cost of mitigating the flow, erecting an earthen dike to contain the main mud stream, building huge pumps near the source to divert newly rising sludge away from villages. Activists estimate that the total cost of cleanup and settlement payments will run into the billions of dollars. If they can obtain a legal ruling establishing Lapindo Brantas as responsible, they say, the company could be forced to pay more, if not all, of the damages. [Source: John M. Glionna, Los Angeles Times, July 10, 2010]

Andrew Marshall wrote in National Geographic: “Trucks and backhoes work relentlessly to contain the damage, fortifying dikes against the 600,000 barrels of mud that continue to surge out each day. Pipes disgorge the sludge into the Porong River; theoretically, rain will wash it to sea—if it doesn't choke the river and flood nearby Surabaya, a city of 2.5 million. With the mud came the mystics—Sumatran witch doctors, Balinese Hindu priests, and a celebrity soothsayer, Mama Lauren—claiming they could stop the deluge. [Source: Andrew Marshall, National Geographic, January 2008]

Believers tossed goats, geese, and monkeys into the mud to appease the dragon supposedly disturbed by drilling. A wealthy local offered a house to anyone who could halt the mud. First, however, applicants had to prove their powers could stop a tap from dripping. It didn't happen. Wary of mystics, weary of mud, Sumitro is short on optimism. "Nothing can stop it," he says. "Not technology, not the supernatural."

A dike protected one neighborhood until November 2006, when the mud caused a gas pipeline to explode, killing 13 people. An attempt to plug the hole with thousands of concrete balls failed last year. Now Soenarso, chief of the Sidoarjo Mudflow Mitigation Agency, is out of ideas for halting the flow. "I can only say it is in the hands of God Almighty," he told the Jakarta Post.

Debate Over What Caused the Sidoarjo Mud Volcano Continues

Rachel Nuwer wrote in the New York Times: Researchers largely relied on computer models and comparisons with other earthquakes and mud volcano eruptions. But recently scientists in Australia, the United States and Britain uncovered a previously overlooked set of gas readings collected at the drilling site by Lapindo Brantas in the days before the mudflow began. In a report in the journal Nature Geoscience, the researchers said that the new data proves the company caused the disaster. “We’re now 99 percent confident that the drilling hypothesis is valid,” said Mark Tingay, an earth scientist at the University of Adelaide and lead author of the paper. [Source: Rachel Nuwer, New York Times, September, 21, 2015]

Others scientists do not seem so sure. “I am surprised that the authors could arrive at such a strong conclusion from such inconclusive data,” said Stephen Miller, a professor of geodynamics and geothermics at the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland who has published findings in support of the earthquake hypothesis. “All science screams that Lusi is natural.”

On May 27, 2006, two days before the mudflow began, a devastating 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck Yogyakarta, a city 150 miles west of a drill site in Sidoarjo, where Lapindo engineers were probing for a new natural gas deposit nearly two miles below the surface. Eight hours after the earthquake, the engineers hit what seemed to be their target carbonate formation. Immediately, something went wrong. Fluid used to maintain pressure in the drill hole suddenly disappeared; hours later, 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. Though the well was capped, the leaking fluid underneath continued to build.

According to Dr. Tingay, 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 — two days after the earthquake — mud gurgled up about 500 feet from the drilling site.

Had the earthquake caused the disaster, it would have done so through a process called liquefaction, in which shaking causes rock and clay to behave like liquids. Liquefaction, Dr. Tingay and his colleagues argue, is accompanied by large gas expulsions, which would have been detected in the well. “Every clay liquefaction event that has ever been observed has been associated with gas release,” Dr. Tingay said. But the new gas readings show no evidence of this.

On the other hand, the data does show hydrogen sulfide building a few hours before the earthquake and just as the water began rushing back into the borehole. Traces also turned up at the Lusi vent in the first days of the eruption, indicating that the mud probably came from the same depth as that reached by the drill, rather than the shallower clays that would have been liquefied in the earthquake.

Citing scientific uncertainty, Indonesian officials have avoided assigning blame for the disaster. “If the majority of scientists said it’s Lapindo’s fault, then maybe the government could base a decision off of that,” said Dwinanto Prasetyo, spokesman for the Sidoarjo Mudflow Handling Agency, a government-backed group in charge of mitigating the disaster. “But every year there is a new scientific paper, and it’s always 50-50 about whether this was a natural or man-made disaster.”

One weakness of the new paper is the assumption that all earthquakes cause gas releases, which is not necessarily true, said David Castillo, the director of Insight GeoMechanics, a consulting company based in Perth, Australia.Peter Flemings, a geoscientist at the University of Texas at Austin, agreed that not enough was known about earthquake-induced gas activity to rely heavily on the authors’ interpretation. More convincing, he said, was the hydrogen sulfide detected in the deep recesses of the well and in the initial mudflow. “Based on the data I have seen, I find the most plausible explanation for the Lusi mud volcano to be poor well design and flow from depth,” Dr. Flemings said. Detailed drilling records might resolve the causation question once and for all, Dr. Tingay said, but Lapindo has declined or ignored recent requests for that data.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: “Encyclopedia of World Cultures Volume 5: East/Southeast Asia:” edited by Paul Hockings, 1993; “Culture and Customs of Indonesia” by Jill Forshee, Greenwood Press, 2006; National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Encyclopedia.com, Library of Congress, Indonesia Tourism website (indonesia.travel), Indonesia government websites, Live Science, The Conversation, The New Yorker, Time, BBC, CNN, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Google AI, Wikipedia, The Guardian and various websites, books and other publications.

Last updated June 2026