Posted 01 August 2007 @ 13:24
JAKARTA, 01 August 2007 - A new report that blames the earthquake of May 2006 for the mud volcano in eastern Java has stoked dispute on Tuesday about whether the drilling well or geology has caused the disaster that engulfed thousands of homes and businesses until today. Scientists tell that they may never find the exact trigger for the eruption of mud from the ground that engulfed an area four times Monaco and already forced 15,000 people to leave their homes.
The government has ordered PT Lapindo Brantas to pay for compensation to the victims of the mud flow that began in May 2006 just 200 meters from an exploration well and two days after an earthquake at a big distance. Lapindo still disputes that it's drilling actions were the trigger. "The available data supports the hypothesis that the initial activity ... was mainly triggered by the energy released by the 27th of May earthquake and not by the drilling," tells a report by a team of scientists based in Norway, Russia, France and Indonesia.
The study, which is accepted for publication in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, states that the earthquake at 280 kilometers distance jolted the faults under the island that ended up releasing pressure in deep rocks and spewed out the mud. Other experts however say that they don't see that relation with the earthquake at all. "The earthquake was probably too small and too far away to have had a significant role," said Richard Davies, a professor at Durham University in England, who reckons Lapindo's drilling was probably to blame.
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