It has been now more than two years since a geyser of mud devastates is from the Indonesian island of Popular dance it. Two years when a daily stream of one hundred thousand cubic metres of a thick, hot and foul-smelling liquid, charged with methane, fate of earth. Thirteen residents found death, hundreds of hectares of ground were gulped down in spite of Pharaonic jobs to contain the mud, and more than ten thousand persons were evacuated for a long time …

It made as two years as the experts if étripaient to indicate the culprit: seism or exploratory boring of hydrocarbons? According to jobs published in the magazine of Geological Society of America, it is the boring located in some metres that caused the training of the geyser. Study confirms advanced scenario eighteen months ago by the British man Richard Davies (University of Durham): boring "pierced" a reservoir of hot water under pressure about three thousand metres deep. The water fractured rocks surroundings to the point of making a passage up to the surface, drawing sediments away with her. The well was it seems dug in doubtful conditions of security.

The worst, it is that phenomenon is not to stop. According to the study published this week, he could last of months, or even years and it will be necessary to wait that he ceases naturally, for lack of pressure. All tries of clogging failed. An oil boring in Brunei had caused in 1979 the training of a geyser which spat some mud out during almost thirty years, in spite of the digging of about twenty well to tranquilize process …

Around Lusi, the name given by the Indonesian to their volcano of mud, it is ten square kilometres which are already unfit for habitation for a long time. Lapindo already has to pay 421 million dollars (267 million euro) to finance the struggle against the mud, but the bill could well get heavy. The company belongs to the family of the multimillionaire Aburizal Bakrie, the Indonesian minister of social affairs.

Picture © Richard Davies - University of Durham