More on the Indonesian Mud Flood
by CKR
The 2 February Science magazine has a short article in its news section about the Indonesian Mud Flood (last WhirledView article here).
The mud volcano, as Science refers to it, is now called “Lusi.”
Whether it was caused by drilling or an earthquake is now being argued by scientists. It looks to me like they don’t have enough data and will keep arguing until they get a better picture of the subsurface in that area. The cause could well be some combination of both the drilling and the earthquake. And it still looks like the drilling was being done without proper casing and blowout preventers.
A relief well was to have been drilled to 2100 meters and then concrete poured down it to plug the flow. However, drilling was stopped at $40 million, before it reached the target depth.
An Indonesian environmental group is suing the Australian mining company Santos, which was involved in the drilling.
Here are links with some of the same information in the Science story, which is behind a subscription wall.
Terradaily (This report is mostly okay. Another I found at this website had multiple errors.)
PhysOrg.com (This photo can’t be of Lusi; the mud is too thick.)
Another PhysOrg.com (This photo looks more authentic.)
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