Mud
expected to flow for another three decades from Surabaya gas well blowout
On May 28, it will be 10 years since something went disastrously
wrong 1800 meters down inside Banjar Panji I, an exploratory gas well being
drilled near the Surabaya town of Sidoarjo, about 900 km. southeast of Jakarta
in east Java.
When
drillers attempted to shake loose a stalled drill bit, or it broke or
disappeared, a torrent of stinking, toxic mud and hydrogen sulfide gas boiled
to the surface, spraying gas 10 meters into the air. Ten years later, mud
and gas have continued to pour of the ground in what has to rank among the
world’s biggest manmade environmental disasters.
The
story of PT Lapindo Brantas, the company that was drilling the well, is a tale
told too often in Indonesia, of professional and managerial incompetence, undue
haste to exploit natural resources at any cost, the passivity of the courts and
most important the timidity of the Indonesian government to attempt to bring
the perpetrators of the disaster to book.
A
decade into the disaster, the Indonesian government under President Joko Widodo
has agreed to use state funds to help PT Minarak Lapindo Jaya, the unit of a
holding group belonging to business tycoon Aburizal Bakrie, to pay Rp781
billion (US$11.72 billion at current exchange rates) in compensation to mudflow
victims at the end of 2015.
The
deal is sealed under a presidential regulation stipulating that Lapindo will
pay compensation to the government within four years with an interest rate of
4.8 percent per year – free of tax.
The
scale of the disaster is breathtaking, with 40,000 to 60,000 people displaced
from 12 villages and forced to take refuge after their homes and land were
buried by the mudflow. Some 30,000 to 60,000 cubic meters of mud bubble to the
surface per day, down from 180,000 cu m in 2011 according to disaster
management authorities– but still the equivalent of 12-24 Olympic-sized
swimming pools.
Damages
at last count have topped US$2.7 billion. Some 4,000 hectares of fish and
shrimp ponds have been destroyed. Mud leaked into surrounding rice fields and
water from the basins has already escaped into surrounding rice fields,
destroying the income of many rice farmers. In addition, the impact of
off-loading the water extracted from the mudflow into the waters in East Java
is a further cause of economic and environmental devastation, according to a scholarly
paper on the disaster by authors Nunung Rahayu, Nadia Nareswari and
Suprandi Putri Nurina of Gadjah Mada University.
Various
efforts to stem the flow have failed – including a network of dams, channeling
it into the sea; and an ambitious plan to plug the crater with giant concrete
balls. Geologists expect it to continue for at least 20 to 30
years. In the meantime, the dikes built to contain the flow have
repeatedly been inundated by resultant flooding, resulting in disruptions of
local highways and villages. Geologists say further breakouts are still a
possibility.
Lapindo
Brantas was controlled by Bakrie, who was Coordinating Minister for Public
Welfare at the time of the disaster and head of Bakrie Group. The family,
through its investments, held a controlling stake in PT. Energi Mega Persada,
Lapindo Brantas’s parent company According to Forbes magazine, Bakrie Group
then was also Indonesia’s wealthiest man, with an empire worth US$5.4 billion.
Bakrie-controlled companies have interests spanning Indonesia’s economy in
mining, oil and gas, palm oil, property, telecommunications and finance. Since
2009, he has also been president of Golkar, long one of Indonesia’s dominant
political parties.
Although
Bakrie officials have sought to blame a 6.2 magnitude earthquake that occurred
in Yogyakarta 250 km. away and two days earlier, the mudflow has been a
personal disaster for Bakrie, both financially and for his reputation.
International geologists from the United States, Britain and Australia, writing
in the journal Nature Geosciences, have concluded that an analysis of
underground gas levels measured at the time of the outburst points the finger
to gas exploration — not an earthquake — as the trigger, a research team from
the United States, Britain and Australia wrote in the journal Nature
Geosciences. An investigation found that steel encasing linings had not been
used, which would have prevented the disaster. Others charged that a safety cap
that should have been deployed in the event of such an accident was nowhere to
be seen.
Lapindo
Brantas has continued to insist on its website that an investigation found no
evidence to link its activities to the eruption. A police investigation sought
in 2008 to identify the trigger and to determine whether the drillers were liable
for compensating 10,000 families, amounting to Rp700 billion (US$10.5 billion
at current exchange rates) but the probe was dropped without result.
In
January, Lapindo Brantas announced plans to redrill the gas well as hundreds of
police officers and security guards guarded a well against angry villagers five
kilometers from the center of the mudflow in Porong. A spokesman told reporters
the drilling activity at Tanggulangin 1 would be for gas rather than for oil,
as had been the case with Banjar Panji-1.
He
said the company was currently conducting drill site preparation (DSP), while
exploration activities were expected to be conducted by the beginning of March.
The
drilling, he said, had initially been scheduled for early December 2015 but had
been postponed due to “social problems.”
“We understand local people’s concerns due to
the trauma from the Sidoarjo mudflow,” the spokesman told the Jakarta Post. “We
don’t want to repeat the same incident and we are open to all parties wanting
to participate in supervising [the drilling].” He insisted the drilling this
time won’t cause problems.
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