Indonesia mud lake draws tourists to disaster zone

By Ed Davies

PORONG, Indonesia (Reuters) - Mud tourism is about the only thing that is flourishing in Porong, an East Java suburb that two years ago became a disaster zone when hot volcanic mud began spewing from the site of a gas exploration well.

Today, the inland sea of mud is twice the size of Central Park in New York. Enough mud to fill 40 Olympic-sized swimming pools spews out every day and has already displaced 50,000 people, submerged homes, factories and schools.

The local economy has been devastated by the disaster, although, there are a few minor exceptions such as a local pharmacy that has seen sales soar as people seek treatment for allergies. The stench of sulphur hangs in the air from the grey, watery mud, although authorities deny it is a health hazard.

"Business is good," said a cashier at Porong Pharmacy. Nearby, motorbike taxis charge high prices to drive curious tourists to the towering levees of rock and earth that hold back the mud. Others hawk DVDs of the disaster.

But they are a rarity in a district that has seen its economy swallowed up by the expanding mud lake covering about 6.5 square km (2.5 sq mile). The mud has badly affected communications and transport links between East Java and the key port city of Surabaya.

The whole mess has become a big embarrassment for the administration of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, as energy firm PT Lapindo Brantas, whose drilling is blamed by some top scientists for the disaster, is partly owned by businesses linked to the family of chief social welfare minister Aburizal Bakrie.

Lapindo disputes its drilling caused the disaster, linking it to tectonic activity after a powerful earthquake in Central Java two days before the mud flow started.

Although a team of leading British, American, Indonesian and Australian scientists, writing in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, said they were certain the gas drilling caused the disaster as pressurized fluid fractured the surrounding rock. Mud spurted out of cracks instead of the wellhead.