Mud Volcano Update - The Story Continues

Well the Mud Volcano in Indonesia continues to spew mud. The government is trying to stop it, but according to this latest round of articles, the 'expert's don't think they'll have much luck. Here is a picture from the Standard out of Hong Kong.
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=17&art_id=38680&sid=12312817&con_type=1

And here is one from MSNBC

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17243448/

They both have the same basic story....see below

Plans to plug a mud volcano that has displaced more than 10,000 people by dropping clusters of concrete balls into it is unlikely to stop the flow, a Japanese scientist said.

The mud eruption that has inundated entire villages since May followed an oil drilling accident in Sidoarjo on the eastern part of Java island.

Numerous efforts to cap the flow have failed and it has become a political and environmental issue, with the government and the drilling company under fire from critics for what they say were lax safety standards behind the accident.

In the latest effort to brake the flow of hot liquid mud, the government today will start to drop 1,500 concrete balls in clusters linked by metal chains and weighing around 400-500 kilograms each into the mouth of the volcano.

"It sounds very difficult right now to stop it," said James Mori, a scientist from the Disaster Prevention Research Institute at Kyoto University. The mud was coming from "a very large crater, so you need a very large structure that can plug that," Mori said Tuesday.

But Rudi Novrianto, a spokesman for the team tasked with stopping the mud, said the plan would proceed.

Two towers were being built to launch the 375 chains of balls into a 50-meter hole from where the mud had been gushing, with each chained cluster consisting of four balls, he said. "We are optimistic that the work will reduce the mud flow," Novrianto said.