Coal in Atjeh

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tagsconcept, coal, atjeh, colonial, mineral-resource
aliasesAtjeh coal, Coal of Atjeh, Coal deposits of Atjeh, Atjeh coal occurrences

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The Coal in Atjeh is the corpus of colonial-era geological observations and mining attempts that document the occurrence of coal in the Residency of Atjeh and Dependencies, Atjeh being the northernmost residency of Sumatra and accordingly the northernmost segment of the Sumatran coal province surveyed by the Netherlands Indies Geological Survey in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The colonial coal record for Atjeh is, in the summary judgment of Van Bemmelen’s *Geology of Indonesia* (1949), disappointing: “Several explorations for coal have been made in the northern part of Sumatra (Atjeh and Dependencies) but the results were disappointing, as large quantities of coal have not been discovered.”

Geological framework

The coal of Atjeh occurs in two geological series:

  • Paleogene coal (Eocene–Oligocene): the older series, exposed along the inland margin of the coastal plain, where the rivers of the Atjeh coast emerge from the central mountains and flow across the older Tertiary rocks before reaching the recent alluvium of the coast. The Paleogene coals are recorded at the East-Atjeh localities (Ajer Djambu Batang, Pendens River, Mouth Woini Orong, Ajer Baturong — Zwierzycki list Nos. 1–4) and at the West-Atjeh localities (Krueng Kluet No. 13, South of Tapatuan No. 14, NW-Krueng Teunom No. 15).
  • Neogene coal (Miocene–Pliocene): the younger series, exposed in the coastal embayments and along the lower reaches of the Atjeh rivers, downstream of the Paleogene outcrops. The Neogene coals are recorded at the West-Atjeh localities (Krueng Raja No. 16, Krueng Antjong No. 17, East of Peureu Moue No. 18, Near Simpane Peust No. 19) and along the Krueng Woyla and Krueng Meureubo rivers, which Van Bemmelen names as the two principal fluvial reference-points for the West-Atjeh Neogene coal zone.

The East-Atjeh Paleogene localities

The East-Atjeh Paleogene coal localities recorded in Zwierzycki’s 1922 inventory (Nos. 1–4 of the Sumatra list) are:

  • Ajer Djambu Batang (No. 1): East coast of Atjeh.
  • Pendens River (No. 2): East coast of Atjeh.
  • Mouth Woini Orong (No. 3): East coast of Atjeh. “Seams a few inches thick.”
  • Ajer Baturong (No. 4): East coast of Atjeh.

These four East-Atjeh localities are recorded in the standard form “ZWIERZYCKI, 1922, p. 37” and represent the earliest systematic record of East-Atjeh coal occurrences. The thinness of the seams (“a few inches thick” at Mouth Woini Orong) is typical of the East-Atjeh Paleogene coals, and is the principal reason for the disappointing economic assessment.

The West-Atjeh Paleogene localities

The West-Atjeh Paleogene coal localities (Nos. 13–15) are recorded by Rinaud (1885) and re-published by Zwierzycki (1922):

  • Downstream Krueng Kluet (No. 13): “Very thin seams”. Cited as “RINAUD, 1885, p. 161; ZWIERZYCKI, 1922”.
  • South of Tapatuan (No. 14): “Seam 3 ft thick. For a distance of 2.5 km coal is exposed at 10 places. The deposit exists presumably of 2 beds of 0.5–2 ft thick”. Cited as “RINAUD, 1885; ZWIERZYCKI, 1922”.
  • NW Krueng Teunom (No. 15): “Seam 2½ ft thick, interbedded with sandstone and shale”. Cited as “ZWIERZYCKI, 1922, p. 35”.

The West-Atjeh Neogene localities

The West-Atjeh Neogene coal localities (Nos. 16–19) are recorded by Zwierzycki (1922):

  • Krueng Raja (No. 16): “5 seams of brown coal of 2–9 ft; direction NW-SE; dip West”. Cited as “ZWIERZYCKI, 1922, p. 160”.
  • Krueng Antjong (No. 17): “3 seams of 2–5 ft”. Cited as “ZWIERZYCKI, 1922, p. 161”.
  • East of Peureu Moue (No. 18): “Seams of shale, interbedded with coal”. Cited as “ZWIERZYCKI, 1922, p. 161”.
  • Near Simpane Peust (No. 19): “Several seams, 2½ ft thick”. Cited as “ZWIERZYCKI, 1922, p. 161”.

In addition to the four named localities, Van Bemmelen records that “The deposits of the second group [the Neogene coals] are located along the Krueng Woyla and the Krueng Meureubo in the district of West Atjeh.” These two rivers are accordingly the principal fluvial reference-points for the West-Atjeh Neogene coal zone.

The Painan district concessions (1909-1941)

The only documented colonial-era coal-mining concessions on Atjeh-relevant territory are the 1909 mining leases granted to the Kinandam-Sumatra Mijnbouw Mij. for the Bukit Durian, Bukit Pulai and Sarik concessions in the Painan district of the Westkust van Sumatra (immediately to the south of the Atjeh border). The Kinandam-Sumatra company’s modest production — 2,000 tons over the decade 1917–1927, all for use at the company’s own Salida gold mine — represents the entire recorded colonial coal production for the West-Atjeh/Painan coal zone. The closure of the Salida gold mine in 1927 and the subsequent return of the Kinandam-Sumatra coal-mining rights to the Government (Bukit Durian and Bukit Pulai in 1934, Sarik in 1941) accordingly mark the end of the colonial coal-mining industry in the West-Atjeh/Painan region.

The disappointing economic assessment

Van Bemmelen’s summary judgment on the Atjeh coal exploration is unambiguous:

“Several explorations for coal have been made in the northern part of Sumatra (Atjeh and Dependencies) but the results were disappointing, as large quantities of coal have not been discovered.”

The West-Atjeh Neogene coals “to the present, seem to be of no or little economical importance”. The reasons for the disappointing assessment are several: the thinness of the seams (most are 2–5 ft thick, with some “very thin seams” of only a few inches); the poor quality of the coal (“impure coal of a poor quality, soft with a tendency to crumble” at the Painan concessions); the limited extension of the seams (“not sufficient to justify a detailed exploration”); and the absence of a local market for coal in the sparsely-populated Atjeh residency. The combination of these factors made the Atjeh coal occurrences, despite their geological interest, economically unattractive to the colonial mining industry.

Significance

The Coal in Atjeh is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history because it is the corpus of colonial-era geological observations and mining attempts that document the occurrence of coal in the Residency of Atjeh — a corpus that, despite the substantial investment of geological field-work over four decades (1885–1929), concluded with the disappointing judgment that “large quantities of coal have not been discovered”. The corpus is also the documentary context for the only colonial-era coal-mining concessions on Atjeh-relevant territory (the 1909 Kinandam-Sumatra leases at Bukit Durian, Bukit Pulai and Sarik), and for the only recorded colonial coal production in the West-Atjeh/Painan region (the 2,000 tons of the 1917–1927 Kinandam-Sumatra operation). The Atjeh coal record is, in this sense, a representative case-study of the colonial mineral economy’s modest footprint on Atjeh territory: despite the geological survey’s substantial investment in identifying and recording the coal occurrences, the residency’s coal resources were never developed beyond the level of a small fuel-supply operation for a single gold mine.

See Also

Source

The Geology of Indonesia, by R. W. van Bemmelen, Vol. II: Economic Geology (The Hague: Government Printing Office; Martinus Nijhoff, 1949), pp. 49–56 (coal in Sumatra, Table 13 and surrounding text, with the West-Atjeh Neogene-coal passage on p. 56 and the Painan-district concessions passage on p. 56).

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