A worker cleans his belongings near a storage area in Sidoarjo flooded by hot toxic mud.
Feature
A right stink
by Chris Holm
How likely is justice for villagers caught in an environmental disaster?
In late May, villagers near the Indonesian town of Sidoarjo noticed a funny smell. The stench of rotten eggs – or as one villager colourfully described it,“bau busuk seperti kuntut anjing” (a stinky odour, like a dog’s farts) – was coming from the site of a nearby natural gas drilling rig.
The site was the Banjar Panji-1 project managed by local prospector PT Lapindo Brantas, in which Australian oil and gas company Santos has an 18 percent stake.
Hot mud from the site followed – 180,000 watery truckloads of it – and the villagers stopped making jokes. By mid-July, the mud-flows, gushing at an estimated 50,000 cubic metres a day, had covered a stinky swathe of more than 20ha, miring four villages and creating a vast ecological disaster that has displaced nearly 8000 people and shut down transport links and businesses.
The mud also made the locals sick. A thousand people went to health clinics in the area to be treated for breathing difficulties. Doctors supplied by Lapindo first blamed the villagers’ complaints on “stress” and later on the sulphur dioxide that emanated from the mud. Some patients complained of a burning sensation on their legs and flaking skin. The medics thought this could have been caused by phenol in the mud or other chemicals used at the drilling site.
With their crops ruined and their workplaces closed, displaced villagers have been sheltering in a disused section of a large market. They have been promised a subsistence income of $US30 a month and are being supported largely by donations.
Indonesia’s national environmental watchdog Walhi estimates that the clean-up costs could reach $US300 million and says that two people have died from the effects of the mud.
And still the mud continues to flow. An Australian team of experts brought to the site has so far been unable to stem the tide emerging from the well site. Signs warn of dangerous levels of toxic gases. At the drilling area’s centre, black geysers fountain out of the ground and white steam rises from bubbling pools – a scene that’s more Rotorua than East Java. Experts fear that the mud could continue flowing from the site for months.
Mired at the centre of the muck is Lapindo, and as the disaster unfolded serious questions began to be asked about its role. An independent investigation into the mud was launched, with members on the team including representatives from Indonesian oil and gas regulator BP Migas and local geologists.
The story that is still emerging – like the flows from the Lapindo well site – suggests that justice for the villagers is not a given. And it shows the perils that multinational companies can face if they partner up with irresponsible local firms.
In the middle of June, there emerged a letter from Lapindo’s Indonesian partner, MedcoEnergi, that seemed to pin the blame for the mud squarely on the driller. Accusing Lapindo of “gross negligence” because of a serious safety violation, MedcoEnergi said that Lapindo had ignored its repeated reminders to put nine-inch-thick metal casing in the well to a depth of 8500 feet, an industry-standard procedure.
A company report leaked with the letter indicates that Lapindo’s operation first encountered problems on the morning of May 27 – the day of the Yogyakarta earthquake, when staff lost the drill bit 3km down. They were trying to retrieve their drill when a “well kick” occurred, a dangerous situation in which gas and liquids escape from the well hole. The drillers tried to seal off the well by pumping a heavy mixture of mud and cement down it. This didn’t work, and large quantities of the mud and gas began escaping from big cracks in the ground around the well site.
An independent oil and gas expert estimates that not sealing the well hole with the casing may have saved Lapindo “up to a million dollars”.
After the letter appeared, the East Java police started a criminal investigation into the well operation; officers have since placed six members of Lapindo’s management under suspicion of criminal negligence. Much now depends on the results of their investigation and that of the independent team.
But in a country where the rivers run black with industrial effluent and the forests continue to be illegally logged, environmentalists are not so certain that the villagers will see justice.
Torry Kuswardono, Walhi’s mining and energy spokesman, says the group is considering taking a class-action suit against Lapindo in co-operation with the Sidoarjo regional government, the Indonesian Environment Ministry and the villagers.
“The mud-flows are in some ways much worse than the other energy disasters that have happened here, because they occurred in a very densely populated area, so it’s hard for the authorities to ignore them,” he says.
However, Kuswardono is less than positive that this plan will bear fruit. He notes that only a handful of companies have been successfully prosecuted in Indonesia for the environmental pollution they have allegedly caused. A notori-ously corrupt legal system and the close relationships between local businesses and political elites frequently conspire to ensure that blame for disasters is “buried” in the discovery process, he says.
Much speculation hinges on the fact that Lapindo is a subsidiary owned by a powerful Indonesian business dynasty, the Bakrie family. Former Bakrie Group head Aburizal Bakrie is also the nation’s Welfare Minister.
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