The N.N.G.P.M. (Nederlandsche Nieuw Guinea Petroleum Maatschappij, “Netherlands New Guinea Oil Company”) was a joint venture founded in the late 1930s by the three major East Indian oil companies — the B.P.M. (Royal Dutch Shell), the N.K.P.M. (Standard Oil of New Jersey, post-war Standard Vacuum) and the N.P.P.M. (Standard Oil of California, with the Texas Company) — to explore for oil in western New Guinea. The N.N.G.P.M. is recorded in Van Bemmelen’s *Geology of Indonesia* (1949) as the operator of the New Guinea complex field (4,410 tons in 1940, 930 tons in 1941) and as the company whose geological survey of New Guinea “is probably the most complete one ever made anywhere in the world.” The N.N.G.P.M. is included in this wiki because its founding structure — a joint venture of the same three companies that operated the Atjeh and northern-Sumatran oil fields — directly reflects the corporate landscape of the colonial Atjeh oil industry.
Founding and structure
Van Bemmelen’s account of the N.N.G.P.M.’s founding reads:
“The latest development has been the founding of the ‘Nederlandsche Nieuw Guinea Petroleum Maatschappij’ (Netherlands New Guinea Oil Company, N.N.G.P.M.), jointly run by the three private concerns already mentioned. Royal Dutch Shell and Standard Vacuum each control forty per cent of this new organisation through subsidiaries, California Standard and Texas Company twenty per cent through the N.P.P.M. This means that American interests in this venture amount to sixty per cent. Production has started in 1949.”
The ownership structure of the N.N.G.P.M. — 40 % Royal Dutch Shell (through the B.P.M.), 40 % Standard Vacuum (through the N.K.P.M.), and 20 % California Standard and Texas Company (through the N.P.P.M.) — is the clearest single instance of the corporate structure of the late-colonial East Indian oil industry. The same three companies (B.P.M., N.K.P.M., N.P.P.M.) that operated the Atjeh and northern-Sumatran oil fields also operated the New Guinea oil exploration through the N.N.G.P.M., and the N.N.G.P.M. accordingly represents the cooperative face of what was elsewhere a competitive industry.
The New Guinea geological survey
Van Bemmelen’s account of the N.N.G.P.M.’s geological survey of New Guinea is unusually expansive:
“Aerial mapping has been done on a large scale and has recently been applied to New Guinea in a region more than three times the size of the combined producing districts of California. The geological survey by the N.N.G.P.M. is probably the most complete one ever made anywhere in the world.”
The superlative — “probably the most complete one ever made anywhere in the world” — is Van Bemmelen’s own, and it places the N.N.G.P.M.’s New Guinea survey at the high-point of colonial petroleum-geological practice. The use of aerial mapping on a large scale, applied to a region “more than three times the size of the combined producing districts of California”, represents the technical high-point of the colonial East Indian oil industry, and the N.N.G.P.M.’s survey accordingly marks the technical frontier against which the earlier surveys of the Atjeh and northern-Sumatran oil fields should be measured.
Significance for Atjeh
The N.N.G.P.M. is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history on two grounds. First, its founding structure — a joint venture of the B.P.M., N.K.P.M. and N.P.P.M. — directly reflects the corporate landscape of the colonial Atjeh oil industry, in which the same three companies (plus the N.L.A.M. and the state-venture N.I.A.M.) operated the Atjeh and northern-Sumatran oil fields. Second, the N.N.G.P.M.’s New Guinea geological survey represents the technical high-point of the colonial East Indian oil industry, and the survey’s reliance on large-scale aerial mapping provides the technical-historical context against which the earlier (and technologically more modest) surveys of the Atjeh and northern-Sumatran oil fields should be assessed.
See Also
- Acheh
- B.P.M.
- East Atjeh oil block
- N.I.A.M.
- N.K.P.M.
- N.L.A.M.
- N.P.P.M.
- Oil exploration in North Sumatra
- Royal Dutch Shell
- Tamiang oil block
- Van Bemmelen’s The Geology of Indonesia (1949)
- 1949
Source
The Geology of Indonesia, by R. W. van Bemmelen, Vol. II: Economic Geology (The Hague: Government Printing Office; Martinus Nijhoff, 1949), p. 8 (N.N.G.P.M. founding and ownership structure), p. 9 (Table 4: New Guinea complex production), p. 9 (aerial mapping and geological survey).