Kr. Ligan (Babah Loh) (modern Krueng Ligan near Babah Loh) is an iron-ore locality on the West coast of Atjeh, 113 km NW of Meulaboh, recorded by Jansen, Lindberg and Wolvekamp in 1922 and reproduced in Van Bemmelen’s *Geology of Indonesia* (1949). The Kr. Ligan locality is No. 3 in Van Bemmelen’s Fig. 41 key, and is the most substantial of the West-Atjeh iron-ore occurrences recorded by the 1922 survey.
The 1922 Jansen-Lindberg-Wolvekamp observation
The 1922 report of Jansen, Lindberg and Wolvekamp, as reproduced by Van Bemmelen, records:
“Locality: 113 km NW of Meulaboh. Over a length of 700 m iron ore, pyrite and pyrolusite were observed. Thickness irregular from 8 to 17 m. Probably also contact-metamorphic origin.”
The 700 m length of the iron-ore occurrence, with a thickness of 8 to 17 m, makes the Kr. Ligan deposit the most substantial of the West-Atjeh iron-ore occurrences in terms of the visible surface extent. The recorded minerals — iron ore, pyrite and pyrolusite (manganese oxide) — indicate a complex sulphide-oxide paragenesis, and the irregular thickness (8 to 17 m) is typical of contact-metamorphic deposits formed at the boundary of an eruptive intrusion and the country rock. The “probably also contact-metamorphic origin” judgment is consistent with the general geological model that Jansen, Lindberg and Wolvekamp applied to all the documented Atjeh iron-ore occurrences; see the entry on A. Tobler for the geological theory.
Significance
Kr. Ligan (Babah Loh) is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history because it is the most substantial of the West-Atjeh iron-ore occurrences recorded in the colonial geological literature — a 700-m-long deposit of iron ore, pyrite and pyrolusite, with a thickness of 8 to 17 m, located 113 km NW of Meulaboh. The deposit’s substantial dimensions, combined with its West-Atjeh location (in the same coastal region as the M.A.E.M. gold-dredging operation and the De Groot 1946 mercury observations), make it a key locality for any assessment of the colonial-era mineral potential of the West-Atjeh coast. The fact that the deposit was never developed is, like the non-development of the Kr. Geuenteuet deposit, evidence of the colonial state’s unwillingness or inability to translate geological reserves into productive mines.
See Also
- Acheh
- A. Tobler
- B. B. Lindberg
- H. Wolvekamp
- Iron ores in Atjeh
- Kr. Geuenteuet
- Kr. Rigaih
- Meulaboh
- P. J. J. Jansen
- Van Bemmelen’s The Geology of Indonesia (1949)
- 1922
Source
The Geology of Indonesia, by R. W. van Bemmelen, Vol. II: Economic Geology (The Hague: Government Printing Office; Martinus Nijhoff, 1949), p. 207 (key to Fig. 41, No. 3, with locality description).