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SURABAYA - Authorities will try to slow down the gushing mud volcano today. The volcano has already inundated villages and factories. They will drop hundreds of giant concrete balls into the location of the mud volcano, an official reported. Every single day, around one million oil drums of hot, noxious mud - about 50 Olympic swimming pools - flows out of the hole at a drilling site. This is a continuing event for the last nine months. Already 11,000 people have been evacuated from the area.
The chained concrete balls, which weigh up to 250 kilograms each, will be dropped into the so-called mud volcano from a scaffolding, said Rudi Novrianto, spokesman for the national task force handling the disaster. When successful, the flow of mud will decrease by about 70 percent.
Mudd flows like this one are fairly common along active tectonic belts like the one running across Indonesia. Opinions differ about the cause of the mud flow, the largest in Indonesia in human history. Experts agree it can flow for many years to come however. Some scientists mention that the rupture was triggered by a faulty drilling by PT. Lapindo Brantas in the search for gas. Others suggest that it was simply the result of increased seismic activity. Two days before the drilling a large earthquake struck Central Java.
The government said that PT. Lapindo Brantas has to pay about 320 million euro in damages including 210 million euro for the victims. They have to pay that by March 2007, a deadline rapidly approaching. Lapindo is a branch of PT. Energy Mega Persada Tbk, majority owned by the family of Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie.
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