Drilling Might Be Getting a Bad Rap For Indonesia's Ongoing "Mud Volcano"

davide-nature writes "The freakish event has been blamed on a company that was drilling for natural gas nearby. But scientists have found a rock formation deep below the surface and shaped like a parabolic antenna. It could have focused seismic waves from an earthquake that occurred shortly before the eruption, and onto a clay layer. The clay then liquefied and somehow found its way to the surface."

A multiple oddity?

[GeekWithAKnife]

This can explain the event; a multiple oddity. You know, when singular oddities gang up on you.

Or maybe the drilling had something to do with it...with that rock formation and all that.

Re:

[g0bshiTe]

If it was due to the drilling which is a common belief, no data to back it up as opposed to studies to disprove it was the drilling then for it to have lasted as long as it had I think more was at work here than just the drilling. It began in 2006 and continues.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Is your comment supposed to be in English?

Re:A multiple oddity?

[g0bshiTe]

It was meant to be SMS text but my spelling is off.

Re:

[pastafazou]

not sure why someone marked your post as a troll, I couldn't make any sense of what g0bshiTe was trying to say either without rereading it twice!

Re:

[GeekWithAKnife]

After I translated his original post to SMS text it made perfect sense.

Re:

[g0bshiTe]

Yeah, I have to apologize after I had posted it I realized that apparently "coherent thought" and writing didn't go together in that post.

For more information.

[PlusFiveTroll]

There is a very long Wikipedia article on this topic that contains a great deal of information on what occurred. While a great deal of work has been done to show that it is not fully the oil companies fault, drilling in to a hydrothermically unstable area with a faulty well design is a recipe for disaster.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidoarjo_mud_flow [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

So you're argument is that it's still the oil company's fault since they were in the area? It doesn't matter that what they were doing could have caused a problem since it didn't cause the problem.

Re:For more information.

[Joining Yet Again]

Finding evidence of one contributory factor is not the same as disproving all other factors.

Re:

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Factors which are little more than guesses.

However, you and your cronies can't sue a parabolic rock formation, nor can you stand there and promise the electorate you will beat the head of it if'n only they'd elect you.

Re:

[Joining Yet Again]

Me and my cronies? Whatever you're reading into my post, it's not there.

Re:

[drainbramage]

Thank you so much Erin Brokavich.

uh oh

[slashmydots]

After Sharnado I don't think the Sci Fi needs any ideas like Mud Volcano for their next movie. Hopefully none of them read Slashdot.

Not the only mud volcano

[flyingfsck]

This isn't the only mud vent in Indonesia and the others were not caused by drilling either.

Re:Not the only mud volcano

[flyingfsck]

A link to a very nice site about mud volcanoes: http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/mud-volcanoes-of-azerbaijan [atlasobscura.com]

Re:

[flyingfsck]

also in the USA at the Salton Sea salt lake: http://www.yelp.com/biz/salton-sea-mud-pots-and-geothermal-mud-volcanoes-calipatria [yelp.com]

Does not seem very plausible

[Anonymous Coward]

There are earthquakes *all* the time in Indonesia, and mud volcanoes are known across many parts of Indonesia. Why would it pick this earthquake (275km away) at this moment to fail, within a short distance (200 metres) from a borehole that was in progress and which was penetrating high fluid pressure zones at depth? It's an awful coincidence. Why here?

B) best case, these guys drilled into a structure that was "ready to blow". That's a bad move potentially leading to disaster regardless.

C) I'm a little s

One flaw with that argument...

[pla]

Okay, the earthquake may have liquified the clay layer. No problem there.

Where, exactly, did that liquified clay layer decide to spurt out of the ground? Hint: Not any of the nearly infinite number of other places nearby that still had a few thousand feet of un-drilled rock covering them.

As full disclosure, I support drilling for natural gas. But we need much, much better quality control (which yes, will raise the price slightly), both during the initial drilling and in upkeep of the well-heads to pr

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

The article explains that the mud greased a fault that slipped and connected the mud to pre-existing hydrothermal tubes that allowed it to spurt to the surface.

Re:

[jittles]

Not their fault? BS. They didn't make the mud, but they sure as hell made the tube it used to get above-ground.

To be clear, the mud did not spew out of the bore hole from the drilling. So whether or not the drilling caused the mud to be created, or whether it in any way contributed to the problem, the drilling itself did not create the hole used by the mud to escape. While you might argue that the drilling caused the event that created the escape path, it was a secondary event to the drilling itself.

Re:

[iggymanz]

Indonesia is the land of mud volcanoes

the mud did NOT come up the borehole they made

may as well blame any nearby lightening strikes on the drilling

Tagline

[Optimal Cynic]

"from the make-up-your-mind-son-it-is-mud-or-is-a-volcano? dept." I think we have a winner for the "most ignorant tagline" dept.

How wrong.

[Type44Q]

Drilling Might Be Getting a Bad Rap For Indonesia's Ongoing "Mud Volcano"

That is simply no way to refer to tubgirl.

Here it is on Google Maps

[turp182]

It doesn't look as bad as it was in 2007 (read the article, looked at the photo...).

https://maps.google.com/maps?q=Sidoarjo,+East+Java,+Indonesia&hl=en&ll=-7.528426,112.710285&spn=0.14091,0.264187&sll=32.576226,-86.680736&sspn=7.662306,16.907959&oq=Sidoarjo,+in&hnear=Sidoarjo,+East+Java,+Republic+of+Indonesia&t=h&z=13 [google.com]

The mud area is about 1 mile square (or 1.8KM guesstimating from the legend).