De Greve was a Dutch mining engineer of the mid-nineteenth-century colonial mining service whose 1865 geological study of the natural oil wells of the East Indies — cited in the standard form “DE GREVE, 1865” — is one of the earliest scientific investigations of East Indian petroleum, and whose 1868 discovery of the coal outcrops in the Umbilin River opened what would become the most important coal field of central Sumatra. De Greve is also, in the petroleum history chapter of Van Bemmelen’s *Geology of Indonesia*, named alongside J. H. Menten and S. W. Tromp as one of the nineteenth-century scientists who “started to study the geological features of the known natural oil wells in the East Indies” after the 1859 drilling of the first Pennsylvanian gushers.
The 1865 oil-wells study
Van Bemmelen’s reference to De Greve in the petroleum history chapter is brief but significant: “Since 1859, when the first Pennsylvanian gushers were drilled, a number of scientists started to study the geological features of the known natural oil wells in the East Indies (J. H. MENTEN and S. W. TROMP; DE GREVE, 1865).” This places De Greve’s 1865 study among the earliest scientific investigations of East Indian petroleum, in the immediate aftermath of the 1859 Pennsylvania oil boom that inaugurated the modern petroleum industry. The specific content of De Greve’s 1865 report is not reproduced by Van Bemmelen, but the citation itself establishes De Greve as one of the founders of East Indian petroleum geology.
The 1868 Umbilin coal discovery
De Greve is also the discoverer of the Umbilin coal outcrops. Van Bemmelen records that “the discovery of the coal seams dates from 1868 when the mining engineer DE GREVE found outcrops in the river Umbilin.” The Umbilin coal field, in the mountains of central Sumatra about 165 km from Emma Haven (the harbour of Padang), would subsequently become the most productive coal field of the Netherlands East Indies, with exploitation beginning in 1892 and production reaching 600,000 tons per year by 1916. De Greve’s 1868 discovery is the founding episode of the Umbilin industry.
Significance for Atjeh
De Greve’s significance for the encyclopedia of Acheh history is indirect but real. His 1865 oil-wells study is one of the earliest scientific investigations of East Indian petroleum, and accordingly part of the documentary background against which the 1883 Zulkler concession and the 1885 Fennema-led Telaga Said drilling — the founding episodes of the northern-Sumatran oil industry — were undertaken. The northern-Sumatran oil industry that De Greve’s work prefigured would, by 1940–1941, extend onto Atjeh territory with the East Atjeh, Tamiang and Atjeh complex fields.
See Also
- Acheh
- J. H. Menten
- J. Zulkler
- Oil exploration in North Sumatra
- Ph. C. Fennema
- S. W. Tromp
- Telaga Said
- Umbilin coal field
- Van Bemmelen’s The Geology of Indonesia (1949)
- 1865
- 1868
Source
The Geology of Indonesia, by R. W. van Bemmelen, Vol. II: Economic Geology (The Hague: Government Printing Office; Martinus Nijhoff, 1949), p. 7 (petroleum history, “DE GREVE, 1865”), p. 57 (Umbilin coal field discovery, 1868).