[nasional_list] [ppiindia] SBY up to his neck in mining mud
- From: "Ambon" <sea@xxxxxxxxxx>
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- Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2006 02:38:31 +0200
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SBY up to his neck in mining mud
Stephen Fitzpatrick, Jakarta correspondent
September 13, 2006
IT'S been called a mud volcano and now it's threatening to erupt all over
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's administration, which is perhaps why Jakarta is
finally doing something.
More than three months after hot stinking ooze began to flow from a ruptured
natural gas well in the regency of Sidoarjo, east Java, displacing more than
10,000 people and promising a massive environmental catastrophe, the Indonesian
Government has announced the formation of a taskforce to handle the problem.
On the day that a seventh village succumbed to the metres-high wall of mud -
the stuff is emerging from the ground at a rate of about 50,000cum a day and
has now swamped 250ha of homes and farming land - Mining and Mineral Resources
Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro said the national team would have just one week to
report back.
That came after weeks of delays and failed attempts at plugging or diverting
the rupture at a well in the Brantas field, located under a mixed heavy
industry, agricultural and residential bloc at the eastern end ofthe densely
populated island.
The leak began on May 29 at the site, operated by mining company Lapindo
Brantas in partnership with oil and gas outfit Medco and Australian gas company
Santos, which has a dominant presence in Indonesia.
A decision not to insert a required collar in a shaft as it was being drilled
apparently caused a shaft collapse, freeing the high-pressure heated mud.
Sidoarjo is a major transport hub and the mud quickly affected that network,
with a toll road and the main rail link having to be physically raised to
remain in use.
Most of those involved at first tried finger-pointing, and the criminal
investigations of nine Lapindo executives and other contractors in relation to
the disaster may yet be a smokescreen for the political influence being peddled
behind the mudflow's opaque spread.
The government team is to work closely with Lapindo, itself a subsidiary of the
vast construction and resources conglomerate Bakrie Group - one of the unlikely
survivors of the Suharto era's crony excesses and part of the personal empire
of Social Welfare Minister Abu Rizal Bakrie. Indonesia's political and business
networks often remain stubbornly complex, and in this case it seems that for
all his apparently genuine efforts to reel in the worst of the crony capitalist
system, Dr Yudhoyono could face an uphill battle.
"I don't know why SBY (Dr Yudhoyono's nickname) didn't do anything until now,"
Torry Kuswardono, a spokesman for Indonesia's biggest environmental protection
agency, said yesterday. "Is it because he has a relationship with the welfare
minister and his family, because that relationship is very intricate."
Mr Bakrie's leading position in the former ruling Golkar party - Suharto's
vehicle for 32 years of military rule - makes him a key element of Dr
Yudhoyono's political survival; so too does that of Vice-President Jusuf Kalla,
whose younger brother Achmad Kalla heads another major resources company,
Bukaka Teknik Utama.
Mr Bakrie confirmed yesterday that the companies involved - not the Government
- would continue to foot the bill for the Sidoarjo containment effort, which it
is estimated will reach $US100million ($133million). Medco, with a 32 per cent
stake in the Brantas field, could pay up to $US23.2million and Santos, with an
18 per cent Brantas share, has set aside $19million.
"The three key things we are focusing on - and which remain unresolved - are
helping those people who are displaced, stopping the mud from coming out of the
well, and dealing with the environmental consequences of the mud that has
already vented," Santos spokesman Chris Bennett said yesterday.
The region was once famed for its inland shrimp farms and shrimp crackers, but
the chemicals contained in the mudflow will soon be in the food chain,
environmentalists predict.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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