The Krueng Kluet (also written Kr. Kluet, modern Krueng Kluet or Sungai Kluet) is a river of the West coast of Atjeh in whose downstream reaches the earliest systematic colonial-era observation of Atjeh coal was made by Rinaud in 1885. The Krueng Kluet locality is No. 13 in Zwierzycki’s 1922 inventory of Sumatran coal localities, and is cited in Van Bemmelen’s *Geology of Indonesia* (1949) in the standard form “RINAUD, 1885, p. 161; ZWIERZYCKI, 1922”.
The 1885 Rinaud observation
Zwierzycki’s 1922 entry for the Krueng Kluet locality, as reproduced by Van Bemmelen, records simply “Very thin seams” — meaning that the coal occurrences in the downstream reaches of the Krueng Kluet are too thin to be of any economic importance. The locality is assigned to the Paleogene series of Atjeh coals (the older of the two coal-bearing series in the residency), which is consistent with the general geological setting of the West-Atjeh coast: the Paleogene sediments are exposed along the inland margin of the coastal plain, where the rivers of the West-Atjeh coast emerge from the central mountains and flow across the older Tertiary rocks before reaching the recent alluvium of the coast.
Place in the Atjeh coal record
The Krueng Kluet locality is, with the South-of-Tapatuan locality (No. 14) and the NW-Krueng Teunom locality (No. 15), one of the three West-Atjeh Paleogene coal localities recorded by Rinaud in 1885. These three Rinaud localities — together with the later Neogene-coal localities of the Krueng Raja (No. 16), Krueng Antjong (No. 17), East of Peureu Moue (No. 18) and Near Simpane Peust (No. 19) — constitute the West-Atjeh portion of Zwierzycki’s consolidated inventory of Atjeh coal occurrences. The Krueng Kluet locality is the northernmost of the three Rinaud West-Atjeh localities, and it accordingly marks the approximate northern limit of the West-Atjeh Paleogene coal zone as recorded in the colonial geological literature.
Significance
The Krueng Kluet locality is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history because it is one of the three West-Atjeh coal localities recorded by Rinaud in 1885 — the earliest systematic colonial-era observation of Atjeh coal. The locality is also the northernmost of the Rinaud West-Atjeh localities, and it accordingly marks the approximate northern limit of the West-Atjeh Paleogene coal zone as recorded in the colonial geological literature. The thinness of the Krueng Kluet seams is itself historically significant: it is the earliest documentary evidence that the West-Atjeh coal occurrences were too thin to support a colonial coal industry, a finding that would be repeatedly confirmed by the subsequent surveys of Hengeveld (1918/1919), Fryling (1921), Zwierzycki (1922) and Van Loheezen (1929) and that would be summarised by Van Bemmelen in 1949 with the observation that “Several explorations for coal have been made in the northern part of Sumatra (Atjeh and Dependencies) but the results were disappointing, as large quantities of coal have not been discovered.”
See Also
- Acheh
- Atjeh’s Westkust
- Coal in Atjeh
- H. Fryling
- J. H. Hengeveld
- J. Zwierzycki
- Krueng Antjong
- Krueng Raja
- Krueng Teunom
- Rinaud
- Tapatuan
- Van Bemmelen’s The Geology of Indonesia (1949)
- Van Loheezen
- 1885
- 1922
Source
The Geology of Indonesia, by R. W. van Bemmelen, Vol. II: Economic Geology (The Hague: Government Printing Office; Martinus Nijhoff, 1949), p. 49 (Table 13, coal localities of Sumatra, No. 13).