Lusi volcano eruption blamed on mining firm by British-led science team

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New research finds exploratory gas well responsible for deadly blast in Indonesia as boiling mud continues to flow


The enormous Lusi volcano in Sidoarjo, East Java, has been spewing out the equivalent of 60 Olympic swimming pools of boiling mud a day since it first erupted in May 2006 from a drilling hole, owned by oil and gas company Lapindo Brantas. Thirteen villages have been smothered by the sludge and 60,000 people have been made homeless. The mud now covers 7sq km.

The new data, according to an international team of scientists led by Durham University, provides the strongest evidence to date that the world's biggest mud volcano was not caused by an earthquake that occurred two days earlier and 174 miles away, as Lapindo claims.

The controversy has stalled all legal actions brought against the mining company, which is owned by the family of billionaire Indonesian politician Aburizal Bakrie.

Greenpeace and Indonesian environmental groups have been calling for a public inquiry and demanded that President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono hold Lapindo and its shareholders, Bakrie Group, Santos of Australia and Medco Group, accountable for what continues to be the country's worst industrial disaster.

Lapindo denies responsibility and backed up its claims in an article by Nurrochmat Sawolo, senior drilling adviser for the company, in the journal Marine and Petroleum Geology. However, the latest research by the scientists led by Durham's Professor Richard Davies, refutes the arguments made by Sawolo. Davies said it provided the strongest evidence to date of a link between the well and the volcano.

"There can be no doubt at all that it was physically impossible for the earthquake to cause this mud volcano," he told the Observer.

"The disaster was caused by pulling the drill bit out of the hole while the hole was unstable. It's like pulling up a bicycle pump, it acts like a plunger, sucking the water and gas from the surrounding rock in a way that could not be controlled."

All efforts to stem the volcano's flow have failed, including the construction of dams, levees, drainage channels and even plugging the crater with concrete balls. The 14 people were killed when a natural gas pipeline underneath one of the holding dams ruptured.

"It could well go on for a few decades," said Davies, who has visited Lusi several times. "It's like taking the lid off a giant Cola bottle.

"We found that one of the on-site daily drilling reports states that Lapindo Brantas pumped heavy drilling mud into the well to try to stop the mud volcano. This was partially successful and the eruption slowed down. The fact that the eruption slowed provides the first conclusive evidence that the bore hole was connected to the volcano at the time."

Their research identifies five critical drilling errors behind the disaster, the key ones being that there was no protective steel casing around the well, and that the drill was pulled out when the situation underground was unstable.

Two years ago the team discovered that Lusi was slowly collapsing under its own weight. Sudden collapses of up to three metres have been recorded at the centre of the volcano, which could grow to form a crater as deep as 146 metres.

But Lapindo's vice president Yuniwati Teryana said the research was wrong. "They don't have complete data. There is no correlation between the eruption and Lapindo," she said, adding Lapindo's view was supported by Indonesia's supreme court in 2009 when it dismissed a lawsuit over the disaster.

"In the court we had several witnesses, including those for and against, who gave their opinion. We should all respect the court result."

Indonesian police last year shelved a criminal investigation against 13 Lapindo senior executives, citing a lack of evidence.

The mud volcano has embarrassed the government of President Yudhoyono. Bakrie is the head of the Golkar party, which is part of a coalition in parliament supporting Yudhoyono.