Bulu Telang is an oil-field locality on the north-eastern coast of Sumatra, in the residency of the East Coast of Sumatra immediately to the south of the Atjeh border, recorded in Van Bemmelen’s *Geology of Indonesia* (1949) as one of the producing fields of the North Sumatra oil province in the 1940–1941 period. The Bulu Telang field was operated by the B.P.M. (Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij, the Royal Dutch subsidiary), and its production of 919 tons of 1000 kg in 1940 and 900 tons in 1941 made it one of the smaller B.P.M.-operated fields of the North Sumatra oil province.
Production figures
For the full North-Sumatran production table see the entry on the East Atjeh oil block. The Bulu Telang field’s production of 919 tons in 1940 and 900 tons in 1941 was small by the standards of the late-colonial East Indian oil industry — comparable to the Telaga Said field (1,076 tons in 1940) and considerably smaller than the Aru Bay field (55,924 tons in 1940). The decline from 919 tons to 900 tons (–2.1 %) is consistent with the gradual depletion of a small mature field. The Bulu Telang field is, like the Telaga Said field, part of the older generation of B.P.M.-operated fields in the Langkat–Deli–Aru Bay region of the East Coast of Sumatra, and its inclusion in the North-Sumatran oil province reflects the geographic contiguity of that region with the Atjeh oil fields to the north.
Significance
Bulu Telang is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history because it is part of the B.P.M.-operated North-Sumatran petroleum complex of which the Atjeh fields — the East Atjeh block and the Tamiang block — are the northern component. The Bulu Telang field’s small mature production is typical of the older generation of B.P.M. fields in the East-Coast-of-Sumatra region, and the field accordingly illustrates the mature-producer context within which the Atjeh-proper oil fields were developed in the late colonial period.
See Also
- Acheh
- Aru Bay
- B.P.M.
- East Atjeh oil block
- Oil exploration in North Sumatra
- Tamiang oil block
- Telaga Said
- Van Bemmelen’s The Geology of Indonesia (1949)
- 1940
- 1941
Source
The Geology of Indonesia, by R. W. van Bemmelen, Vol. II: Economic Geology (The Hague: Government Printing Office; Martinus Nijhoff, 1949), p. 9 (Table 4: Oil production in the East Indies in 1940 and 1941).