Mud Volcano

[wolfigor]

I don't know if was discussed here already but it's an interesting event I wasn't aware of until recently.

location in googlemap: http://goo.gl/maps/95oRg

This volcano did not exists before May 28, 2006 and it's now considered a man made Volcano (even if the company who made the drilling objects to it and refuse liability for the destruction of a village and displacement of thousands of people).

From wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidoarjo_mud_flow):

The Sidoarjo mud flow or Lapindo mud (informally abbreviated as Lusi, a contraction of Lumpur Sidoarjo wherein lumpur is the Indonesian word for mud) is the result of an erupting mud volcano in the subdistrict of Porong, Sidoarjo in East Java, Indonesia that has been in eruption since May 2006. It is the biggest mud volcano in the world, created by the blowout of a natural gas well drilled by PT Lapindo Brantas, although company officials contend it was caused by a distant earthquake. In August 2012, Geologists definitively stated that the Sidoarjo mudflow was caused by drilling operation misconduct which only used a quarter of the height of drilling wallpipe and was not caused by an earthquake 275 kilometers away. This was stated by a Constitutional Court concerned with the National Budget to bear a part of the disaster fund

A big dike has been built to contain the outflow:

This is the world's largest mud volcano, has left 13,000 families homeless, and it is likely to continue erupting for another 26 years.

As usual the drilling company refuse to pay damages to the people that have been effected by their operations.
This is a sober reminder that things can go horribly wrong when drilling near places where people live (see fracking).

 

[Cutlass]

Careless drilling is a growing problem. Not every well that's drilled carelessly has a problem. And because of that it's cheaper to just take the risks.

 

[Borachio]

Hmm. I wonder how fertile that mud is.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Hmm. I wonder how fertile that mud is.

+Rich nutrients from deep underground - Frakking fluid contaminants = Breadbasket???

 

[Antilogic]

All right, I didn't realize you could have mud volcanoes. Turns out the mud is lying in a tectonic feature and is mostly comprised of marine salts and mud (i.e. it's not freshwater mud, if that makes sense).

26 additional years of eruption... are the containment measures currently taken sufficient to, well, contain the mud over that time period?

 

[Cutlass]

All right, I didn't realize you could have mud volcanoes. Turns out the mud is lying in a tectonic feature and is mostly comprised of marine salts and mud (i.e. it's not freshwater mud, if that makes sense).

26 additional years of eruption... are the containment measures currently taken sufficient to, well, contain the mud over that time period?

That really depends on the volume that eventually emerges. So, probably not.

 

[Antilogic]

If it was the company that estimated the volume and containment, I would definitely assume not.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

What you don't trust industry to regulate themselves and tell the truth? But that always worked before, right.....

 

[Antilogic]

You know me.

But it's especially bad in these cases because the companies have a strong financial incentive to under-report the impact of the disasters to avoid the bad press and pay less out in damages.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Yeah I'm generally pro-frakking but I think letting the companies regulate themselves or go largely unregulated is freaking stupid.

But you know, Free Market FTW!

 

[Cutlass]

You know me.

But it's especially bad in these cases because the companies have a strong financial incentive to under-report the impact of the disasters to avoid the bad press and pay less out in damages.

They can't really be held fully liable in any case. But the extent to which they can minimize their liability could make a substantial difference on their bottom line.

 

[Mr. Dictator]

Kick them out of the country, unless they agree to move their HQ to this village.

 

[Thedrin]

Kick them out of the country, unless they agree to move their HQ to this village.

They're a domestic firm.

It reminds me of a chapter in Jared Diamond's Collapse, arguing that big multinationals could extract natural resources in a far more environmentally friendly manner because they were more likely to have experience with doing things wrong in the past - you learn from your mistakes and all that. The example cited were the oil drilling operations in New Guinea. The cited operation in Papua New Guinea were being run by a massive multinational. The cited operations in Indonesia by a local firm.

I guess in the event of catastrophe it's also a lot more politically viable to publicly eviscerate the responsible company if they're perceived as foreigners. I'm skeptical that Exxon Mobil would have been as vilified as BP were if they were responsible for the Deepwater Horizon spill.

To be honest I don't think I'd trust a domestically run group to extract oil/gas/whatever may be there from Irish waters.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I really don't recall that BP being British Petroleum had much impact on the revulsion people felt toward them though that's just me.

 

[Thedrin]

I'm not implying xenophobia is relevant. I'm suggesting that Exxon Mobil would have more clout than BP, in the US and people in positions of power would be less likely to be in a position where they could be openly critical of them or as critical of them.

However:
a) They would still have come in for a lot of criticism. I'm just arguing that it would have been less.
b) I don't know how much political clout BP and Exxon Mobil had relative to each other in 2010. I'm guessing it was Exxon Mobil based on their base of operations being in the US, but I could be wrong.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I'm not disputing most of what you've said really, just the notion that Exxon would've gotten less criticism than BP. I really don't remember the British in BP coming up when people railed against it. Now if it had been NATPET, on the other hand...

But really that's all just my opinion in any case.

 

[bhsup]

Exxon was a bad pick to use as an example. After the Valdez, I think any massive spill by Exxon would be far more devastating to them than another oil company. Still, I get the point. Problem is that there are not a lot of big US ones anymore. Texaco? They're Dutch now. Amoco is now part of BP. There's Phillips 66, Conoco, maybe Sinclair still.

EDIT: Yeah, confirmed Sinclair still independent and America. WOO! USA #1!

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Is Sinclair the one with the dead dinosaur logo?

 

[Gucumatz]

Sinclair still exists?

But yea wow that's pretty impressive and frightening at the same time. I have always wondered if you could weaponize drilling technology to destabilize fault lines, I guess its theoretically possible after all to at least create a volcano

 

[Cutlass]

We don't know enough about geology, nor do we really have the power, to use and direct a geological attack. And we really couldn't drill to set off a volcano either. This isn't a true volcano. It's geologically heated water and mud under enough pressure to be forced to the surface, but it's not lava.