Indonesia's Stinking Mud Flood - Updated

by CKR

An exploratory oil well is freely flowing stinking mud in Indonesia, displacing people from their homes over a 10-square-mile area, the LA Times tells us today. What they don't tell us is that the drilling that caused this was gross incompetency on the part of the drilling company, PT Lapindo Brantas.

Reuters is a bit more on the ball. Googling "PT Lapindo Brantas" gets you a lot more news than was in the LA Times or Reuters.

Asia Times gives a credible account of what happened.

Burrowing through hot rock almost three kilometers deep, Lapindo's drill string hit something soft. According to company documents, the resulting drop-off in pressure caused the crew to lose the drill bit in the hole when they tried to raise it up.

The next day, toxic gases and hot mud began rushing out of the well - a danger sign in gas prospecting known as a "well kick". Drillers pumped a mixture of cement and mud back in the hole in an attempt to seal it, which seemed to work, until huge quantities of effluent began to emerge from large cracks in the ground nearby. For an entire month, Lapindo experts tried to stem a seemingly limitless stream of mud and water gushing from the ground.

Okay, they lost the drill bit. Happens all the time. But responsible drillers use a double valving system that prevents blowouts; they don't just hope for the best and pour concrete down a hole that you know has that soft spot. And, yeah, they use casing too.

Reuters says that

Police have declared nine Lapindo employees suspects in an environmental pollution investigation.

But it sounds like the company itself has been negligent in major ways.

It looks like President Yudhoyono recognizes this. We'll see if holding Lapindo responsible is possible under Indonesia's laws.

Here are a blogger who's following the spill, the Indonesian forum for the environment's (WALHI) report, and more (here and here) from an Indonesian news source.

Update (9/27/06): Phila updates this story, including a photo of the well. Doesn't look like they're going to cap that baby any time soon, although I think back to the first Gulf War, when we thought that the well fires wouldn't be put out any time soon. They got in the Texas guys who do that sort of thing for a living, and they put out the fires expeditiously. Isn't there someone who could get this one under control?

Further update here.

01/18/07 Update can be found here.