J. H. Menten

Properties2
tagsperson, geologist, dutch, colonial
aliasesJ. H. MENTEN, Menten, Menten (geologist)

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J. H. Menten was a Dutch scientist who, alongside S. W. Tromp and De Greve, belonged to the first generation of geologists to study the natural oil wells of the East Indies in the aftermath of the 1859 Pennsylvania oil boom. Van Bemmelen names Menten and Tromp together — “J. H. MENTEN and S. W. TROMP; DE GREVE, 1865” — as the scientists who, in the early 1860s, “started to study the geological features of the known natural oil wells in the East Indies”, thus inaugurating the scientific literature on East Indian petroleum.

Place in the East-Indian petroleum literature

Menten’s work, together with that of Tromp and De Greve, stands at the head of the documentary sequence of East-Indian petroleum geology. The sequence runs:

  1. 1859: Drilling of the first Pennsylvanian gushers, inaugurating the modern petroleum industry.
  2. 1865: De Greve’s geological study of the known East-Indian oil wells.
  3. early 1860s: Menten and Tromp’s geological investigations of the same wells.
  4. 1869: Von Baumhauer records fifty-three localities with oil seepages in the East Indies (forty-four of them in Java).
  5. 1872: The first drilling for oil in the East Indies, at Madja in West Java (Wing Easton, 1914).
  6. 1883: J. Zulkler obtains the first North-Sumatran oil concession.
  7. 1885: Fennema-led government crew drills Telaga Said to success — the founding episode of the northern-Sumatran oil industry.

Menten’s contribution is, accordingly, part of the foundational scientific literature on which the subsequent northern-Sumatran oil industry — including the East Atjeh, Tamiang and Atjeh complex fields on Atjeh territory — was built.

Significance for Atjeh

Menten’s significance for the encyclopedia of Acheh history is indirect: he is one of the founders of East-Indian petroleum geology, and his early scientific work accordingly belongs to the documentary background against which the 1883–1885 founding of the northern-Sumatran oil industry — and its subsequent extension onto Atjeh territory — was undertaken.

See Also

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).

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