Ecological accident enrages East Java residents

I wonder if the mud is fertile, its curse may have a way of really being quite fortunate. It kind of reminds me of that story of that lake in an African crater from which a cloud of poisonous gas welled up and killed everybody for miles around.

The ud certainly is not fertile, it contains massive amounts of chlorides, ie (salts) that are killing all the plants in its way. Proposals have been given to the main contractor to contain the mud in a safe manner and to also protect the residents from further mud inundating thir villages. However these proposals are aptly ignored, i suppose the issue is cost to th company. Instead they jst go about their merry old business and continue to destroy the peace and harmony of the villages and their local environment. Pity for them.

I wonder what gas, or mixture of gases, is evolving and in what volume. Seems that this may have a greater effect on global weather, than worldwide tailpipe emissions.
Add this to the Volcanic venting in the Alaskan Fourpeaked Mountain near Alaska’s Cook Inlet and it would seem that all the furor about man’s contribution to global warming may be misplaced.

Notes on the Origin of the Sidoarjo Mudflow

1) The Origin and Evolution of the Sidoarjo Mudflow East Java

Origin of the Mudflow:
The Smoking Gun: Banjar Panji Well Data Sheet details well status at 30 May 2006 “when it was killed after mud flow.” Source: http://hotmudflow.wordpress.com/bpj-1-well-data-sheet/.
This demonstrates the mudflow most probably had its origins in a well control incident when the drill bit penetrated an over pressured basin floor claystone sequence and well control was lost at a depth of 9,297 feet (as reported by PT Lapindo Brantas and Santos Limited). The absence of a 9 5/8 inch casing, with extended open hole over an interval of 5,717 feet, would have made well control very difficult. It is likely that increased mud weights, used in an effort to control the well, resulted in break down of the rock formation at the 13 3/8 inch casing shoe, differential sticking and loss of the drill pipe and bottom hole assembly. A cement plug set within the 13/3/8 inch casing left the 5,717 feet of open hole section beneath in internal blow-out status and fractures were propagated to the surface from the 13 3/8 inch casing shoe via the formation that was broken down (mud weight pressure exceeded leak off test pressure) around the casing shoe.

Contributing Factors
9 5/8 inch casing was not run in the well:
 5,717 feet of 12 1/4 inch open hole exceeds normal industry practice and makes well control problematic, particularly in an over pressured environment.
 “Good oil field practice” would be to set casing above over pressure to stabilise the normally pressured sequence and facilitate in any well control requirements at depth.
 Normal practice would be to set casing above the objective in any event, to facilitate well control in the objective reservoir interval. The well objective: Kajung Formation limestone was prognosed at 8,500 ft.
 The situation detailed on the well data sheet is consistent with an internal blow-out and would be avoided by pursuit of “good oil field practice”
 The well was left in a completely unstable status following setting of cement plugs within 13 3/8 inch casing. The lower 5,717 feet of uncased hole were left uncased and over pressured, most probably in an uncontrolled internal blow-out status.

From these facts and analysis it is concluded that:
 Drilling operations most probably created the original conduit to surface The Driller’s Log from the well site is required for absolute confirmation of the events in the well (critical data: Leak of Test at 13 3/8 inch casing shoe, mud weights in use 27-30 May 2006 & activity in well bore over this period).
 Well design/implementation as detailed on the well data sheet, does not accord with “good oil field practice”, based on the known geology and details provided accompanying the well data sheet.
 The well was left in an uncontrolled internal blow out status following the setting of a cement plug in the 13 3/8 inch casing, enabling over pressured hot mud to flow to the surface from the open hole beneath the casing show.

Mudflow Dynamics
 Reported mud flow to date is ca. 12 million cubic metres (ca. 0.01 cubic kilometres), equivalent to ca 72 million barrels of fluid. This represents less than 0.001% of the mud volume at depth.
 Area under mud now greater than 400 hectares with containment increasingly difficult.
 Maximum flow rate is now reported to be ca. 200,000 cubic metres per day (ca. 1.2 million barrels fluid per day) although flow is variable and intermittent over a period of days (pressure build up and surging associated with source at depth)
 Forecast that rates could exceed 250,000 cubic metres per day by Feb/Mar 2007
 Subsidence (1-5 m) and some suggestion of radial fracture propagation occurring outward from the Banjar Panji location (c.f. 22 November East Java gas trunk line explosion)
 There is now the potential for new conduits to propagate via subsidence related radial fracture development up to several kilometres from the source – ultimately an area of 5-100 sq km centred on Banjar Panji may be impacted.

Conclusions:
Flow rates reportedly continue to increase, implying widening of conduit(s) to surface.
Well intervention is unlikely to be effective in the face of the major flow rates and the large conduit volume.
Acceleration of subsidence and flow via multiple, radially displaced source vents is a significant possibility over the next six months: 5-100 sq Km around the Banjar Panji location may ultimately be affected.
The flow appears to have past the point of no return – well intervention is now likely to prove futile.

2) Earthquakes and Mudflows a Global Study

Just in case your wondering what the truth of the matter is; the attached plot and following article accessed from the website http://eqinfo.ucsd.edu/~dkilb/mud.html indicate that it highly improbable (impossible) that the 27 May 2006 Jogjakarta earthquake of Richter magnitude 5.9 triggered the Brantas PSC mudflow, which is distant 250 km from the Jogjakarta epicenter. At this distance a magnitude 7.9 earthquake would be required. Such a quake is a hundred year plus event in this part of the world and would be absolutely devastating in Java (1906 San Francisco quake for comparison was Richter magnitude 7.6).

Technical Explanation: By way of explanation the vertical axis on the plot is Richter Magnitude of the earthquake (an absolute measure of earthquake energy) while the Intensity lines on the plot are Modified Mercalli scale, which is a measure of ground motion, or shaking (as opposed to absolute earthquake energy) at the distance measured off the horizontal axis. Ground movement falls off with distance from the earthquake, as indicated by the Intensity lines i.e. it takes a bigger earthquake to shake the ground at distance from the earthquake epicenter.

Based on this study, to achieve the noted Mercalli Intensity 6 to trigger mudflow at a distance of 250 Km would thus require a Richter magnitude 7.9 quake in Jogjakarta

Correlations Between Earthquakes and Large Mud Volcano Eruptions
Authors

R. Mellors, SDSU
D. Kilb, IGPP/SIO/UCSD
A. Aliyev, Geology Institute, Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences
A. Gasanov, Republic Center of Seismic Survey, Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences
G. Yetirmishli, Republic Center of Seismic Survey, Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences

Project Description
We examine the potential triggering relationship between large earthquakes and methane mud volcano eruptions. Our dataset consist of a 191-year catalog (1810 to 2001) of eruptions from 77 volcanoes in Azerbaijan, Central Asia, supplemented with reports from mud volcano eruptions in Japan, Romania, Pakistan and the Andaman Islands. We compare of the occurrence of historical regional earthquakes (M > 5) with the occurrence of Azerbaijan mud volcano eruptions and find the number of same-day earthquake/eruption pairs is significantly higher than expected if the eruptions and earthquakes are independent Poisson processes. The temporal correlation between earthquakes and eruptions is most pronounced for nearby earthquakes (within ~100 km) that produce seismic intensities of Mercalli 6 or greater at the location of the mud volcano. This assumed magnitude/distance relationship for triggering observed in the Azerbaijan data is consistent with documented earthquake induced mud volcano eruptions elsewhere. We also find a weak correlation that heightened numbers of mud volcano eruptions occur within 1 year after large earthquakes. The distribution of yearly eruptions roughly approximates a Poisson process, although the repose times somewhat favor a non-homogenous failure rate, which implies that the volcanoes require some time after eruption to recharge. The volcanic triggering likely results from some aspect of the seismic wave’s passage, but the precise mechanism remains unclear.

Plot of distance versus magnitude for earthquakes and mud volcanoes. The small dots show all possible distance/magnitude pairs in our catalog (from each earthquake epicenter to a known mud volcano location even if it did not erupt). Open stars show Azerbaijan mud volcano locations that were reported to have eruptions on the same day as a large earthquake. Open circles were reported to show increased activity after the earthquakes in November/December 2000. Red filled stars show magnitude/distance for other reported earthquake/eruption triggering pairs. Approximate intensity bounds (dashed lines) are also shown. Note that intensity ~6 represents an approximate lower limit for triggering.