Dordtsche Petroleum Maatschappij — the “Dordrecht Petroleum Company”, named for the South Holland city of Dordrecht — was the first indigenous Indonesian petroleum company, founded by the former governments’ mining engineer Stoop after his departure from government service. The company’s history is recorded in Ir. Van der Ploeg’s chapter Mijnbouw in Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk (1946), as part of the wider story of the Royal Dutch Shell concern.
Foundation and character
According to Van der Ploeg, Stoop — after resigning from the colonial government’s mining service — carried out borings on Java that “were crowned with success.” He immediately began a small factory to distil and refine the crude oil. “He sold in 1889 the first 8000 cases of lamp-oil locally in this densely populated region. As packaging served old cases and tins of American oil, which had been bought up second-hand by Chinese. With this the first Indies oil business, the later Dordtsche Petroleum Maatschappij, had come into being.” The Dordtsche was, Van der Ploeg notes, “a business that rested entirely on the local market, and this character it has also later for the most part retained.”
Lines of business
Although the Dordtsche’s principal product was lamp-oil for the local Javanese market, the company also early diversified into other products. With the exploitation of further terrains in the residency of Rembang (which yielded paraffin-bearing oil), the new refinery at Tjepoe also produced paraffin, “which supplied the raw material for the batik wax that found much demand in those regions of Java.” The Dordtsche was further “the first to use benzine on Java for street lighting, and for this imported special lamps.”
Absorption into Royal Dutch–Shell
The Dordtsche remained independent until 1911, when it was the last of the roughly fifty Indies petroleum companies to be absorbed into the Koninklijke–Shell concern. Van der Ploeg’s account of the merger process: “Slowly most of the petroleum companies that had arisen in the Indies — some fifty in number — were absorbed into the Koninklijke–Shell concern, the last being the Dordtsche in 1911. In this development the Koninklijke–Shell was not a little supported by the increasing demand in the world for benzine, which went hand in hand with the development of the automobile and to which the Sumatran oil is so rich.”
Significance for Atjeh
For the Atjeh-focused reader, the Dordtsche’s significance is comparative: it was the Javanese counterpart to the Sumatra East Coast–based Koninklijke Petroleum Maatschappij of Kessler and Deterding, whose Pangkalan Brandan refinery in Langkat (immediately adjacent to Atjeh) was the operational base of the late-colonial Sumatran petroleum industry. The 1911 absorption of the Dordtsche into the Koninklijke–Shell concern thus marks the moment at which the Javanese and Sumatran (and Borneo) petroleum industries were finally unified under a single corporate umbrella — a unification whose Sumatra East Coast component, in the Langkat–Deli belt, lay directly adjacent to Atjeh and shaped the late-colonial strategic significance of the Atjeh region.
Dutch terms used in this article
- Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk — What the Indies Received and Gave
- Wereldbibliotheek N.V. — World Library Ltd.
- Dordtsche Petroleum Maatschappij — Dordrecht Petroleum Company
- Koninklijke Petroleum Maatschappij — Royal Petroleum Company
- Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij — Batavian Petroleum Company
- pen — open/wide (Atjeh concept)
- Atjeh — Aceh
- Acheh — Aceh
- Langkat — Langkat
- Deli — Deli
- Borneo — Borneo
- Java — Java
- Sumatra — Sumatra
- Pangkalan Brandan — Pangkalan Brandan
- merica — pepper (Malay)
- Dr. — Doctor
- Ir. — Engineer (Dutch Ingenieur)
See Also
- Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk
- F. P. C. S. van der Ploeg
- A. J. B. Kessler
- H. W. A. Deterding
- Koninklijke Petroleum Maatschappij
- Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij
- Royal Dutch Shell
- Langkat
- Deli
- Acheh
- 1889
- 1911
Source
Wat Indië Ontving en Schonk, onder leiding van Dr. C. W. Wormser (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek N.V., 1946), pp. 252–253 (chapter Mijnbouw door Ir. F. P. C. S. van der Ploeg).