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SIDOARJO - Indonesia's disastrous mud volcano is collapsing on itself, according to new research released on the second anniversary of the ever-growing environmental catastrophe. Every day, 100,000 cubic metres of hot, stinking sludge continues to ooze from the mud volcano, which burst through the earth two years ago during deep drilling at a nearby exploratory well, linked to Indonesia's richest man and also part-owned by Australian company Santos.
The grey-brown ooze now covers seven square kilometres in heavily populated East Java. It has swallowed 11 villages, including thousands of homes, businesses, paddy fields and houses of prayer. Now a new report warns the bleak, sodden landscape is sinking - and could subside by as much as 146 metres over the coming years.
It has subsided four centimetres each day for more than a year due to the sheer weight of the mud, and the collapse of a layer of rock as mud gushes from beneath it, says the report, by Durham University UK and Indonesia's Institute of Technology Bandung. But there also have been sudden collapses of up to three metres in some areas. Scientists warn that as it sinks, new faults are forming, allowing water to spurt to the surface in previously unaffected areas.
Co-author Professor Richard Davies said the sudden collapses indicated the beginnings of a caldera, or large crater formed by the subsidence of the volcano's cone. "The most negative effects of the collapse are that new faults are forming," Davies said.
"This is allowing new conduits of fluid and gas to come to the surface. Outside the mud volcano there are actually new vents forming, water is suddenly spurting to the surface. Basically the mud volcano has a life of its own now."
October 2007 file photo: Steam rises from the 'crater' of the mud volcano. After almost one and a half year continuous mud from the Lapindo Brantas drilling site near Gempol, just south of the town of Sidoarjo in the province of East Java, tens of thousands were forced to move, hundreds of hectare of village and estates are covered in mud and there is still no end in sight. © indahnesia.com
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The satellite images in this page show the area that is affected by the mud flow that started in May 2006. The images shown were taken on 5 May 2008.
Image size : approx. 3.705 km x 4.036
For more satellite pictures go to;
http://www.crisp.nus.edu.sg/co(...)s/mudflow/index.html
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