Video shows mudflow in Indonesia's second largest city, not 'active volcano'

This article is more than one year old.
Published on November 21, 2023 at 08:25
4 min read
By AFP Indonesia

Indonesia has more than 120 active volcanoes, but a widely-shared video of a patch of land that appears to ooze what looks like hot liquid does not show a new one has formed in the archipelago's second biggest city Surabaya. Experts told AFP the video -- viewed millions of times with the false claim -- actually shows mudflow from an abandoned oil well that was drilled in the 1880s during the Dutch colonial era.

"An active volcano suddenly appeared in the centre of Surabaya, East Java," says the Indonesian-language caption to a video shared here on a verified YouTube channel on October 7, 2023.

The 12-minute video -- showing a muddy site near a dense residential area -- has been viewed more than 182,000 times.

From the 28-second mark, a man can be seen inspecting the site from a closer angle and saying it is "the crater of the active volcano".

Screenshot of the false post, taken on November 9, 2023

Indonesia experiences frequent seismic and volcanic activity due to its position on the Pacific "Ring of Fire", where tectonic plates collide (archived link).

The archipelago's Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation Center says it is home to more than 120 active volcanoes -- or around a tenth of the total active volcanoes in the world (archived link).

Other videos showing the same area in Surabaya have racked up over 3.1 million combined views alongside a similar false claim here and here on YouTube, and here and here on TikTok.

Some social media users appeared to believe the claim.

"Please be careful. It is a real active volcano," wrote one comment under the video published on YouTube.

"It is dangerous if it erupts," another said.

Screenshot of YouTube users' comments, taken on November 9, 2023

Multiple experts, however, refuted the claim the videos show an active volcano.

Abandoned oil well

"It is a mud volcano or mudflow," Amien Widodo, a geologist at the Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology in Surabaya, told AFP on November 9, 2023 (archived links here and here).

Amien said that although it is called "mud volcano", it is not a volcano that spews molten rock (archived link).

"It is not dangerous," he said.

Amien said the mud in the YouTube video comes from an abandoned oil well drilled by the Dutch in the 1880s.

"The mud is always flowing out of the well but in small amounts," he said.

According to this analysis that Amien wrote in 2019, the Dutch began oil exploration in Surabaya in 1886 and operated a number of wells before they abandoned them in 1937 (archived link).

Hendra Gunawan, chairman of the Indonesian Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation Center (PVMBG), also refuted claims made on social media about the site in Surabaya (archived link).

"It is mud from an abandoned well drilled during the Dutch era," Hendra told AFP.

The US Geological Survey (USGS) says: "Although mud volcanoes do sometimes erupt with powerful results, they are, for the most part, harmless" (archived link).

AFP managed to geolocate the site on Google Maps here (archived link).

The site has been tagged as "Gunung Anyar Mud Volcano".

Below is a screenshot of the satellite view of Gunung Anyar Mud Volcano on Google Maps. AFP has marked the site name with yellow circle.

Screenshot of Gunung Anyar Mud Volcano on Google Maps

Below is a screenshot comparison between the false video (left) and the satellite view of Gunung Anyar Mud Volcano on Google Maps (right), with the same features marked by AFP:

Screenshot comparison between the false video (left) and the satellite view of Gunung Anyar Mud Volcano on Google Maps (right)

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