Sidoarjo mud disaster, East Java
Australian energy company Santos has met determined resistance to its coal seam gas operations in Australia. It is less well known that Santos was one of the companies responsible for a monumental environmental catastrophe in Indonesia in 2006. The accident drowned villages in the Porong subdistrict of Sidoarjo in mud, and displaced up to 50,000 people.
Santos has an 18% share in the operator responsible for the disaster, PT Lapindo Brantas (Lapindo). Other shareholders include the Bakrie Group and Medco. Santos and Lapindo have denied responsibility. They blame the mud on a nearby earthquake.
But a 2007 report in the Geological Society of America’s journal, GSA Today, argued that the disaster happened because Lapindo failed to install sufficient casing around its gas well.
Green Left Weekly
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