Indonesia's "mud volcano" has been spewing toxic sludge for 12 months in East Java, submerging villages, farms and factories and leaving thousands of people homeless.
Following is a chronology of the events:
May 29, 2006: A team from Lapindo Brantas drilling company notices steam, water and gases in its exploration well in Sidoarjo district on Java island
-- Several people reportedly suffer minor respiratory problems from the released hydrogen sulfide gases. School children in the area are sent home
June 2: Around 300 people are evacuated from their homes after mud spews from the well which has been dubbed a volcano and inundates nearby homes
June 10: A major highway linking the East Java capital of Surabaya with the southeast city of Malang closes after the hot sludge reaches part of the road
June 19: Around 4,000 people flee their homes as the mud spreads, and the government says Lapindo caused the disaster
-- Lapindo denies the claims, and instead blames a devastating earthquake in Central Java two days earlier for triggering the flow
June 20: Vice President Jusuf Kalla inspects the area and calls on welfare minister Aburizal Bakrie, whose family is linked to the company, to accept some of the responsibility
June 26: Mud covers 116 hectares (286.5 acres), submerging four villages and ricefields and displacing more than 5,600 people
August 10: Lapindo agrees to compensate the now more than 7,600 people displaced
September 12: President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono orders formation of a team led by the energy minister to deal with the crisis
-- Reports say more than 9,000 people have been displaced
October 17: Lapindo says it will pay 106 million dollars towards cleaning up the mud spill
November 22: An underground gas pipeline explodes killing eight people following subsidence around the nearby volcano. The death toll later rises to 11 with others injured
December 3: Another person injured in the gas explosion dies, taking the toll to 13, after another with severe burns dies three days earlier
December 29: Yudhoyono says Lapindo must pay 3.8 trillion rupiah (420.7 million dollars) in compensation and other costs
January 23, 2007: British experts conclude in a US journal that the volcano appears to have been triggered by drilling at a depth of around 2,830 metres (7,735 feet) below the surface
-- It also says the volcano has been disgorging between 7,000 and 150,000 cubic metres (245,000 and 5.25 million cubic feet) of mud a day
February 27: Engineers start dropping chains of large concrete balls into the volcano in a bid to plug it
March 5: Public works minister Joko Kirmanto says attempts to plug the crater and measures to hold back and then divert the spewed mud will cost the government 371 million dollars
-- A court says a lawsuit can proceed against the president and other officials for human rights violations over the slow response to the disaster
March 20: The volcano briefly stops for about 30 minutes, the first time in more than nine months, although scientists cannot fully explain why
March 24: A police probe into the cause of the disaster declares it has 13 suspects, all Lapindo executives or field workers of the company
March 31: The dropping of concrete balls into the crater is suspended
April 12: A report from the government's National Development Planning Agency says losses could rise to 44.7 trillion rupiah unless the volcano stops flowing
May 11: A satellite image obtained by Kompas daily newspaper shows the mud covers an area of 692 hectares (1,709.97 acres)
