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Porong: Gas seeping from the ground in a village hit by a mud volcano in Indonesia's East Java province is triggering safety concerns and calls for an evacuation, residents said on Wednesday.
The gas is in an area where thousands of homes and factories have been submerged by hot mud since a mud volcano first started to erupt in May 2006, forcing about 15,000 people to abandon their homes.
Some scientists say the mudflow in Sidoarjo regency, near
the country's second biggest city, Surabaya, was caused by a
gas drilling operation by PT Lapindo Brantas Lapindo and PT Energi Mega Persada Tbk, which has a stake in Lapindo, dispute that the disaster, which started two days after a massive earthquake in Central Java, was caused by
drilling.
Sudirman said that villagers marked the spot of new gas leaks by planting a piece of pipe to try and prevent people
from setting the flares alight.
Ahmad Zulkarnaen, a spokesman for the government body
managing the mudflow, said he was aware of the flaring gas, but that Mindi was not a village eligible under a government decree for compensation to pay for an evacuation.
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