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Quakes hit Indonesia, four dead
JAKARTA: A series of powerful earthquakes
off the northern coast of West Papua, Indone-
sia, early yesterday killed four people, injured
several others and flattened buildings, officials
and local television said.
The US Geological Survey said a magnitude
7.6 quake occurred some 150km northeast of
Manokwari in the Indonesian half of the island
of New Guinea, at a depth of 35km. An official
at Indonesia’s meteorology agency said there
were several quakes in the area during the
night.
“Hotel Mutiara and tens of houses are
flattened to the ground,” Pitsau Amafnini, an
eyewitness, told Reuters.
However, an important BP-led liquefied
natural gas (LNG) project close to the area was
not affected, a BP spokesman told Reuters.
Manokwari, with a population of about
161,000, is in a remote, sparsely-populated
part of Papua which attracts tourists thanks
to its diving sites, wildlife including birds of
paradise, and spectacular scenery.
Predominantly Christian Papua, which oc-
cupies the western half of New Guinea island,
has fewer than three million inhabitants out of
Indonesia’s total population of 226 million.
Russia gas disruption spreads to Czechs
KIEV/MOSCOW: Ukraine and Russia blamed
each other for disrupting gas flows to Europe
yesterday and the reductions in supplies
caused by their dispute spread to the Czech
Republic and Turkey.
Russian natural gas supplies dropped by
5% to the Czech Republic, the latest casualty
in the stand-off which began when Russia cut
off the gas to Ukraine on New Year’s day in a
dispute over debts and pricing.
“It is the first signal of the Russia-Ukraine
crisis in the Czech Republic,” said a spokes-
man for gas importer RWE Transgas.
Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, said
gas was flowing in as normal. EU energy
firms said there would be no effect on their
customers as long as the disruptions did not
last so long that reserves ran low. Analysts
say if it drags on for weeks it will make things
tough in the EU.
Earlier Turkey reported a fall in supplies,
joining Poland, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria,
which had already said they were affected.
Several different tribes, some animist, live
in this part of Indonesia, which was under
Dutch rule until 1963 and which, despite its
vast natural resources, tropical forests, and
mineral wealth, remains one of the poorest
and least developed parts of the country.
The quake triggered a small tsunami that hit
the Japanese coast but there was no damage,
Japan’s Meteorological Agency said. The Indo-
nesian authorities also issued a tsunami warn-
ing for Papua, but lifted it shortly afterwards.
Indonesia is located in an area of intense
seismic activity known as the “Pacific Ring of
Fire” and frequently experiences quakes and
tsunami warnings.
A 9.15 magnitude earthquake on Dec 26,
2004 triggered a massive tsunami, killing
about 230,000 people in Indonesia, Thailand,
Sri Lanka and other countries around the
Indian ocean.
Priyadi Kardono, spokesman for the disas-
ter management centre, said that the health
ministry had confirmed four deaths from the
quakes, while several buildings were dam-
aged. Metro TV reported that six people had
been hospitalised.
“Two hotels collapsed, Mutiara Hotel and
Russia – long at odds with its neighbour
over its ambition to join Nato – has accused
Kiev of stealing gas intended for Europe, but
Ukraine hit back by alleging Moscow was
cutting flows by more than half through a
key export pipeline.
“Naftogaz considers the actions of
Gazprom as threatening the energy security
of Ukraine and Europe, which could bring
unpredictable consequences for the entire
gas transit system of Europe,” Ukraine’s state
energy company said in a statement.
Ukraine’s economy is vulnerable to a
prolonged dispute with Russia. A presidential
aide said the economy was set to contract 3
to 5% this year, leaving it little room to accept
the higher prices Russia is demanding.
Gazprom said yesterday it was honouring
in full its commitments to supply customers
in Europe. It blamed Ukraine for siphoning off
or blocking deliveries of gas equivalent to one
sixth of the total supply.
In a sign the firm was in no mood for compro-
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EARTHREPORT
Kali Dingin Hotel. Two bank buildings, a stor-
age of (national logistics agency) Bulog, and
Week Ending Jan 2
the official house of the head of the regency
were also damaged,” Kardono said.
“There were no casualties from Kali Dingin
Hotel and three trapped victims inside the Mu-
tiara Hotel have been rescued,” he said, adding
that about a thousand people had gathered at
certain locations in the town seeking shelter.
The BP-led Tangguh LNG project is near
the area affected by the quakes.
“There is no significant impact, only a crack
in the office building. The work continues,
BP spokesman Nico Kanter said, adding em-
ployees at the Tangguh operations had felt
the tremblors.
BP’s Tangguh project includes an operat-
ing site in Bintuni Bay, which is about 100km
south of Manokwari, as well as offices in Babo,
Sorong, Manokwari, Bintuni and Fak Fak, ac-
cording to its website.
A spokesman for Australian disaster relief
agency Emergency Management Australia
told Reuters that the quakes were felt in Papua
New Guinea, and in the northern Australian
city of Darwin, but there were as yet no reports
of major damage or injuries. – Reuters
EPAPIX
A view of
the main
mise, Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller said natural
that since Ukraine had turned down a previous gas
proposal to pay US$418 per 1,000 cubic metres pipeline in
of gas, he was raising the price to US$450. Boyarka
The European Union, which gets about village
a fifth of its gas from pipelines that cross near Kiev,
Ukraine, has demanded that transit and supply Ukraine.
contracts be honoured. – Reuters
theSun | MONDAY JANUARY 5 2009
End of an epoch
THE impact humans have made on the surface
of the planet has become so expansive that
scientists say Earth has entered a new epoch
the Anthropocene. A team from the Geological
Society of London made the determination after
examining transformed patterns of sediment,
disruptions to the carbon cycle and wholesale
changes to the world’s plants and animals.
Members believe humans have so physically
changed the landscape that Earth can no longer
be considered still in the Holocene epoch.
Crisis of humanity
FOOD riots in several poor nations during March
and April caused UN and other officials to con-
sider that the growing diversion of grain harvest
from food to ethanol fuel was causing a global
food crisis. Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of
the International Monetary Fund, says a growing
number of government ministers had labeled
the impact of biofuels as a “crisis of humanity.”
Earthquakes
THE year’s most deadly earthquake struck
China’s Sichuan province with a magnitude of
7.9, killing at least 69,000 people. The May 12
disaster forced 15 million people to be evacu-
ated, while more than 5 million were left home-
less by destruction estimated at US$86 billion
(RM310 million).
• Deadly quakes also occurred in southern Peru,
East Africa’s Great Rift Valley, Kyrgyzstan, west-
ern Sumatra, northern Japan, and along China’s
Sichuan-Yunnan border.
Arctic meltdown
The Arctic polar ice cap melted at an unprec-
edented rate, opening up both the famed
Northwest Passage and the Northern Sea Route
off northern Russia simultaneously for the first
time on record. In a trend that began in the mid-
1960s, 2008 was the second-warmest year in
the Arctic, closely behind the record set in 2007,
which produced the greatest Arctic meltdown
ever observed.
Eruption
The southern Chilean city of Chaiten was made
uninhabitable by the first eruption of a nearby
volcano in at least 9,000 years. Ash blowing
across Patagonia during May from Chaiten
Volcano poisoned crops, pastures and water
supplies. – Universal Press Syndicate