This is a part of the real version of my writing. The Post had to edit it due to limited space in the front page of our newspaper's Feb., 22, 2008 edition.
The mudflow in Sidoarjo, East Java (in my country in Indonesia) started to erupt in May 2006 when PT Lapindo Brantas, which is connected to the family of the Coordinating Minister for People’s Welfare Aburizal Bakrie, was having its drilling activities.
The mudflow has now inundated an area of 700 hectare, relocating over 10,000 of families from their homes.
A drilling expert from Bandung Institute of Technology, Rudi Rubiandini, ensured the audience (of the event to declare the movement “to kill the Lapindo mudflow”) that the mudflow was a human-made disaster; not natural disaster as had been widely asserted since the beginning of the tragedy.
Rudi said that based on the investigation on the “real time drilling data” (Geolograph), the Lapindo mudflow was in fact an “underground blowout”, which occurred when the pressure in well bores exceeded the pressure that formation rocks could tolerate.
Such incident, said Rudi, often takes place during drilling activities, but eruption to earth surface could actually be at once prevented if casings had been installed as required.
Lapindo, however, had failed to install the casings in certain depths. Therefore when the pressure in the well bore reached 1,054 psi, far exceeding the Maximum Anticipated Surface Pressure (MASP) of 316 psi, hot water far beneath the ground erupted unstoppably to the earth surface, producing the disastrous mudflow.
Rudi and former deputy director of state-owned oil company PT Pertamina, Mustiko Saleh, rejected the theory saying the earthquake that rattled Yogyakarta a few days before the mudflow began triggered the mudflow.
Rudi said, quoting earthquake experts Manga & Broadsky, that the Yogyakarta quake that measured 6.3 on the Richter scale would only affect areas located tens of kilometers from the epicenter.
“Lapindo’s well bore, meanwhile, is located some 300 kilometers from the epicenter,” he said.
Mustiko added, quoting an expert from the United States, that even if the quake reached Sidoarjo, it would only have a magnitude of 2.2 on the Richter scale, the same magnitude produced by passing-by trucks.
(The details are available in book entitled “Killing Lapindo mudflow; Saving the Nation, People’s lives and the State Money”, published by the “Killing Lapindo mudflow” movement).
