Pangkalan Brandan

Properties2
tagsplace, town, harbour, colonial, dutch, east-coast-sumatra, buitenbezittingen, tramway, areo-baai-plannen, refinery, sumatra, oil, oostkust-van-sumatra, achehnese, bataafsche-petroleum-mij, perlak-petroleum-mij, pipe-line
aliasesPangkalanbrandan, Pangkalan Brandan, Pengkalan Brandan, P. Brandan, the East-Coast terminus of the Deli-tram, Pangkalan-Brandan, Pangkalan Brandan refinery

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Origin: Zijlker’s borings and the petroleum industry

Pangkalan Brandan’s place in history rests above all on its role as the cradle of the Dutch colonial petroleum industry. Dr. T. Volker’s Van Oerbosch tot Cultuurgebied (1928) records that Zijlker began test-borings for petroleum near Pangkalan Brandan in 1883, in the Landschap of Langkat, immediately adjacent to Atjeh. Volker identifies the Acehnese raids as “one of the serious dangers to which [the petroleum industry] was exposed” throughout the 1880s and 1890s. In 1884, Zijlker secured a concession from the Sultan of Langkat, and when the Koninklijke Petroleum Maatschappij was formed in 1890 — purchasing Zijlker’s business for ƒ371,000 — the company built its first refinery at Pangkalan Brandan. By June 1892 the refinery was producing 18,000 cases of petroleum per month. Exports were shipped from Pangkalan Soesoe, established in 1897 as the dedicated harbour for the petroleum trade, since Pangkalan Brandan’s own roadstead was too shallow for modern shipping. In 1896, 1,851,512 cases were exported; in 1897, 4,564,987 cases. New concessions at Telaga Said, Besitang, and Aroebaai were opened in 1894. By 1914, petroleum exports from the region reached a total value of ƒ31,000,000.

Account from De Buitenbezittingen (1917) — Pangkalan Brandan

The Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s account of the Deli Spoorweg Maatschappij’s network notes that the trambaan was extended “northward to Pangkalan Brandan, the small export place south of the Aroe-baai, with its shallow roadstead” in the 1902–1907 phase of expansion. The Bureau notes that the roadstead at Pangkalan Brandan was shallow — “evenmin aan de moderne scheepvaarteischen voldoende” (equally inadequate to the demands of modern shipping) — a characterisation that placed Pangkalan Brandan, like Belawan-Deli, in the same category of inadequate harbours that the Aroe-baai-plannen were designed to bypass through the development of Arube Bay.

The Bureau’s account of the Aroe-baai-plannen then places Pangkalan Brandan at the centre of the 1913 commercial conflict over the Atjeh-tram’s southern extension. The Bureau notes that the Aroe-baai-plannen “were maintained even when, in place of Belawan-Deli, the equally inadequate roadstead of Pangkalan Brandan was put forward as the desired terminus of the Atjeh-tram.” The substitution of Pangkalan Brandan for Belawan-Deli as the proposed terminus — and the maintenance of the Aroe-baai-plannen despite the substitution — is presented by the Bureau as evidence that the Aroe-baai project was “of evident interest to the whole gouvernement Atjeh” and was not merely a project of the Belawan commercial interest.

The Bureau’s account of the Cultuurraad’s deliberations on the proposed connections between the Atjeh-tram and the Deli-tramway network also identifies Pangkalan Brandan as the proposed junction for the Cultuurraad’s preferred connection: “the cultuurraad now proposes the connection of the Atjeh-en Deli-tramnetten by a line Besitang–Pangkalan Brandan.” This proposal — like the earlier proposal for a direct Besitang–Tandjoeng Slamat junction — was contested, and the Bureau reports that “there is now under consideration a direct connecting line from Pangkalan Brandan with Telok Taboehan [Telok Taboeban], there joining the Atjeh-net (see Bijlage XI).”

Significance

Pangkalan Brandan is, in the Encyclopaedisch Bureau’s account, one of the principal commercial opponents of the Aroe-baai-plannen of 1913 — the place whose trade, together with that of Belawan-Deli, vigorously resisted the project to develop Arube Bay as a deep-water harbour. The substitution of Pangkalan Brandan for Belawan-Deli as the proposed terminus of the Atjeh-tram — and the eventual proposal for a direct connection from Pangkalan Brandan to Telok Taboeban — mark the progressive narrowing of the Atjeh-tram extension project in the face of East Coast commercial opposition.

Account from The Geology of Indonesia (1949) — Pangkalan Brandan

The B.P.M. refinery

Van Bemmelen’s account of the Pangkalan Brandan refinery, in the refining section of the petroleum chapter of *The Geology of Indonesia*, reads:

“There were five large refineries: one in North Sumatra (Pangkalan Brandan, B.P.M.), two in South Sumatra near Palembang (Pladju of the B.P.M. and Sungei Gerong of the N.K.P.M.), one in East Java (Tjepu, B.P.M.), and one in East Borneo (Balikpapan, B.P.M.). There were also two small refineries in East Java (Wonokromo of the B.P.M. and Kapuan of the N.K.P.M.).”

The Pangkalan Brandan refinery is accordingly one of the five large refineries of the pre-war East Indian oil industry, and the only large refinery in North Sumatra. The refinery’s location at Pangkalan Brandan — in the Langkat residency, on the East-Coast-of-Sumatra side of the Atjeh border — places it at the southern edge of the same petroleum-geological system that produced the Atjeh oil fields to the north, and its operation by the B.P.M. (Royal Dutch) links it directly to the B.P.M.-operated Atjeh fields (the East Atjeh block and the Tamiang block).

The destruction and post-war reconstitution

Van Bemmelen’s account of the refinery’s wartime fate reads:

“After the war, during the political troubles in the East Indies, Pangkalan Brandan and Tjepu were destroyed. At the beginning of 1949 the refineries of Palembang (Pladju and Sungei Gerong), Balikpapan (East Borneo), and Wonokromo (East Java) have been put into operation again.”

The Pangkalan Brandan refinery was accordingly destroyed during the political troubles after the war — presumably during the Indonesian National Revolution of 1945–1949 — and was not put back into operation at the beginning of 1949. The refinery’s destruction marks the effective end of the colonial-era northern-Sumatran oil-refining industry, and the absence of Pangkalan Brandan from the list of refineries put back into operation in 1949 accordingly marks a break in the institutional continuity of the northern-Sumatran oil economy between the colonial and the post-colonial periods.

Significance

Pangkalan Brandan is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history because it was the site of the only large refinery in North Sumatra — the principal industrial installation of the northern-Sumatran oil industry, and the southern anchor of the same petroleum-economic system that included the East Atjeh, Tamiang and Atjeh oil complex oil fields on Atjeh territory. The refinery’s operation by the B.P.M. (Royal Dutch) links it directly to the B.P.M.-operated Atjeh fields, and its destruction during the Indonesian National Revolution marks the effective end of the colonial-era northern-Sumatran oil-refining industry. The absence of Pangkalan Brandan from the list of refineries put back into operation in 1949 accordingly marks a break in the institutional continuity of the northern-Sumatran oil economy between the colonial and the post-colonial periods.

Account from Verkenningen in Atjeh (1923)

Pangkalan Brandan — modern Pangkalan Brandan — is a harbour-place on the Oostkust van Sumatra, the destination of the 120 km pipe-line by which the Bataafsche Petroleum-Mij pumps the crude oil of the Perlak Petroleum-Mij from Rantau Pandjang in the landschap of Peureula (Perlak). The Bataafsche does not process the oil at Rantau Pandjang but pumps it through the pipe-line to Pangkalan Brandan, where it is shipped. Only the gases are compressed at Rantau Pandjang into oil, which is likewise pumped away. Pangkalan Brandan was, with Pangkalan Soesoe, one of the two great oil-ports of the northern Sumatran coast in the early civilian period.

Account from J. Roest (1916) — Brandan in the railway debates of 1912–1915

J. Roest’s chronicle De spoorwegverbinding tusschen Deli, Atjeh en de Aroebaai (December 1916) gives the place from the standpoint of the 1912–1915 railway disputes: the existing import and export harbour of Tamiang was seated here, in the river of the Babalan — as Schadee, the former administrator of the Deli Spoorweg Maatschappij, proved to the Cultuurraad out of the traffic statistics, correcting the Minister’s preference of Telok Taboehan. Its Chinese shop-house colony of about eighty at Kwala Simpang took, with their nearly all-Brandan branches, a third of Brandan’s import trade, worth at least a million guilders of trade and f 100,000 of profit yearly — the ground of his argument that the 8-K.M. connection Pematang Pandjang–Pangkalan Brandan, estimated at f 300,000, was a small expense for so great a market.

Roest cites, too, the Deli Company’s reserve: its application of the beginning of 1911 for a preference in the concession from Pangkalan Brandan to the Aru Bay had been meant as goodwill only, and the company would hardly use it where the Government set no price on cooperation. By his year-end account of 1915 the plantation region’s expectation had changed: the Government abandoned provisionally a state-built connection of the two railway systems, and the company itself would now build the line Besitang–Pangkalan Brandan.

See Also

Account from Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu

Oil refinery in Sumatra’s Oostkust connected by 128 km pipeline to Perlak oil field in 1901.

Source: J. Jongejans, Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 88.

Sources

Van Oerbosch tot Cultuurgebied: Een Schets van de Beteekenis van de Tabak, de Andere Cultures en de Industrie ter Oostkust van Sumatra, by Dr. T. Volker (Medan: Deli Planters Vereeniging, 1928), pp. 47–56. Delpher Digital Library, reference DLP-76. Universiteitsbibliotheek Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, shelfmark 09383.

De Buitenbezittingen 1904 tot 1914, Deel I, bewerkt door het Encyclopaedisch Bureau, Mededeelingen van het Bureau voor de Bestuurszaken der Buitenbezittingen, Aflevering X (Weltevreden: Landsdrukkerij, 1917), pp. 71–72 (sections “De Atjeh-tram” and “De Spoor- en Tramwegen ter Oostkust van Sumatra”).

The Geology of Indonesia, by R. W. van Bemmelen, Vol. II: Economic Geology (The Hague: Government Printing Office; Martinus Nijhoff, 1949), p. 10 (refining section, list of large refineries, and post-war destruction/reconstitution).

Verkenningen in Atjeh, by Dr. R. Broersma (De Locomotief, October 1923), passim.

Land en Volk van Atjeh Vroeger en Nu, by J. Jongejans, Oud-Resident van het Gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, with a foreword by Dr. H. Colijn (Baarn: Hollandia Drukkerij N.V., c. 1938), pp. 88.

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