Indonesia and World Tourism News

By Ed Davies Reuters
PORONG, Indonesia: Mud tourism is about the only thing that is flourishing in Porong, a suburb of Surabaya that two years ago became a disaster zone when hot volcanic mud began spewing from the site of a gas exploration well.

Today, the inland sea of mud is twice the size of Central Park in New York. Enough mud to fill 40 Olympic-sized swimming pools spews out every day and has already displaced 50,000 people and submerged homes, factories and schools.
The local economy has been devastated by the disaster, although, there are a few minor exceptions like a local pharmacy that has seen sales soar as people seek treatment for allergies. The stench of sulfur hangs in the air from the grey, watery mud, although the authorities say it is not a health hazard.

“Business is good,” said a cashier at Porong Pharmacy. Nearby, motorbike taxis charge high prices to drive curious tourists to the towering levees of rock and earth that hold back the mud. Others hawk DVDs of the disaster.

But they are a rarity in a district that has seen its economy swallowed up by the expanding mud lake covering about 6.5 square kilometers, or 2.5 square miles. The mud has badly affected communications and transport links between the key port city of Surabaya and the rest of East Java Province.

The whole mess has become a big embarrassment for the administration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. The energy company Lapindo Brantas, whose drilling is blamed by some top scientists for the disaster, is partly owned by businesses linked to the family of the chief social welfare minister, Aburizal Bakrie.

Lapindo disputes that its drilling caused the disaster, linking it instead to tectonic activity after a powerful earthquake in Central Java two days before the mud flow started in May 2006.

However, a team of Indonesian, American, Australian and British scientists, writing in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, said they were certain the gas drilling caused the disaster as pressurized fluid fractured the surrounding rock. Mud spurted out of cracks instead of the wellhead.

The government has ordered Lapindo to pay more than $400 million in compensation to the victims and to cover the damage.

Bakrie, the richest man in Indonesia with a net worth over $9 billion, according to Globe Magazine, an Indonesian publication, said the company was not responsible but would still pay compensation and build housing.

That is little consolation, though, to businessmen like Mursidi, whose factories were buried in the mud and who has yet to receive much help as he struggles to pick up the pieces.

“The office has vanished, the factories have also vanished,” said Mursidi, who goes by one name like many Indonesians. “So we have to start this business from zero.

“The biggest impact is on mental recovery. We don’t have any will any more.”

Mursidi, 43, added that out of 96 of his former workers, only 13 remained while the others had scattered since the disaster.

Mud volcanoes occur in other parts of Indonesia as well as in places like China and Italy, but the one in Porong is thought to be world’s biggest, and there appears to be little that can stop it.

Richard Davies, a geologist at the University of Durham, in Britain, who co-authored the journal article on the causes of the disaster, said that the mud flow could affect the area for years to come and warned that the central part of the volcano was collapsing.

There is simmering anger among those that remain.

On a street facing the mud zone, a sign says: “Put Lapindo on trial! Confiscate Bakrie’s assets!”

Sporadic protests involving hundreds of people include calls for Lapindo to pay the remaining 80 percent of compensation after an initial 20 percent payment and for the company to compensate residents in areas newly affected by the mud.

The company is obliged to pay compensation in an area designated under a presidential decree, but responsibility outside this area is murky, and some locals have also refused to accept what they regard as derisory compensation.

Yuniwati Teryana, a spokeswoman for Lapindo, said the firm was only obliged to compensate residents but detailed in an e-mail message the 163 billion rupiah, or $18 million, of aid that the firm had made to businesses and workers affected by the mud.

Energi Mega Persada, owned by the Bakrie Group, indirectly controls Lapindo, which holds a 50 percent stake in the Brantas field from which the mud came. Medco Energi International holds a 32 percent stake and Santos, an Australian energy company, holds the rest.

In addition to factories, the mud has also destroyed rice paddies and affected shrimp ponds in the Sidoarjo district, which is famous in Indonesia for its shrimp crackers. The government has also been left with a huge bill for damage to infrastructure and the need to reroute a gas pipeline, railroads, electrical power lines and roads.

The mud flow has been channeled into the nearby Porong River and out to sea, causing sedimentation and alarming environmentalists.

The Indonesian national planning agency estimated last year that the disaster had caused 7.3 trillion rupiah of losses and that the figure that could rise to 16.5 trillion rupiah.

Businesses just outside the mud-stricken area have also not been spared.

“It’s been quiet for two years because the buyers moved to God knows where,” said Lenny, a supermarket clerk.

Source: http://www.iht.com/articles