Word: gas
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...tall in places. As the mud rises, so must the levees, but so far Lusi seems to be outpacing human engineering. Twice the earthworks have been breached - most recently on Jan. 4 - flooding more houses. On Nov. 22, 2006, the weight of the soil ruptured a natural-gas pipeline, causing a massive fireball that incinerated 13 workers. According to an International Monetary Fund estimate, Lusi has already cost Indonesia $3.7 billion in damage and damage control. And things are likely to get worse. As mud spews up from the ground, the area around the eruption is gradually sinking. Eventually, Porong...
...That's because mud isn't the only thing boiling over in Porong. Villagers displaced by the eruption blame the disaster on PT Lapindo Brantas, an Indonesian mining company drilling for natural gas in the area. Lapindo is partly controlled by the family of Aburizal Bakrie, Coordinating Minister for the People's Welfare, one of Indonesia's wealthiest men and an ally of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Victims of the disaster say that a murky web of political influence and corporate fecklessness has blunted the official response to the mud eruption. "Everyone is suspicious," says Mas Achmad Santosa...
...that happened. On May 27, Lapindo's Banjar Panji-1 well was operating in a field not far from Ahmad Mudakir's village. The well's target was a shelf of limestone some 9,800 ft. (3,000 m) below the surface. Lapindo's drillers were searching for natural-gas deposits, but the well was exploratory. No one knew for certain the subterranean conditions beneath Porong. The drillers had reached about 9,300 ft. (2,800 m) when they noticed a drop in pressure inside the well...
...past few months the sticker shock has grown much worse. Wheat prices have jumped by more than 20% since November, driven up by rising global prices as well as local hoarding ahead of the election and wheat smuggling into neighboring Afghanistan. The price of the gas that many Pakistanis use to cook with has also skyrocketed. January's inflation rate was nearly 12%, the highest in almost three years...
...subsidies, for instance. Sadly for ordinary Pakistanis and for the incoming government, the country's rapidly worsening fiscal deficit will make it harder to keep underwriting those costs. Continuing the subsidies will only worsen the country's budgetary woes. But if the government passes on the true cost of gas, the resulting increase will fuel inflation even more...