Telaga Said is an oil-field locality on the north-eastern coast of Sumatra, in the Langkat residency immediately to the south of the Atjeh border, and the site of the 1885 drilling that — under the leadership of the government mining engineer Fennema and on the 1883 concession of J. Zulkler — became the founding episode of the northern-Sumatran oil industry. The Telaga Said field was, by the 1940–1941 period, a small mature producer operated by the B.P.M., with production of 1,076 tons of 1000 kg in 1940 and 960 tons in 1941.
The 1883–1885 founding drilling
For the founding episode of the Telaga Said field, see the entries on J. Zulkler and Ph. C. Fennema. In summary: in 1883 the private entrepreneur J. Zulkler obtained the first oil concession in North Sumatra; he encountered “considerable difficulties in drilling on account of an abundant flow of gas” and asked the Government Bureau of Mines for assistance; a government crew under the mining engineer Fennema was sent with drilling equipment; and in 1885 “this oil venture proved to be an outstanding success.” The Telaga Said field is accordingly the oldest producing oil field in northern Sumatra, and the ancestor of the entire B.P.M.-operated North-Sumatran petroleum complex that, by 1940–1941, included the Aru Bay, Bulu Telang, East Atjeh and Tamiang fields.
Production figures (1940–1941)
For the full North-Sumatran production table see the entry on the East Atjeh oil block. The Telaga Said field’s production of 1,076 tons in 1940 and 960 tons in 1941 was small by the standards of the late-colonial East Indian oil industry — less than 2 % of the Aru Bay production in the same years — but the field’s historical significance as the originating site of the northern-Sumatran oil industry made it more important than its modest late-colonial output would suggest. The decline from 1,076 tons to 960 tons (–10.8 %) is consistent with the gradual depletion of a small mature field.
Significance
Telaga Said is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history because it is the site of the 1885 drilling that founded the northern-Sumatran oil industry — the industry that would, by 1940–1941, extend onto Atjeh territory with the East Atjeh, Tamiang and Atjeh oil complex fields. The Telaga Said field accordingly stands at the head of the documentary sequence of northern-Sumatran petroleum exploration, and the Zulkler–Fennema drilling of 1883–1885 is the originating legal-technical episode of that sequence. The field is also a B.P.M. operation, which links it directly to the B.P.M.-operated Atjeh fields and to the wider Royal Dutch petroleum economy of northern Sumatra.
See Also
- Acheh
- B.P.M.
- Bulu Telang
- De Greve
- East Atjeh oil block
- J. Zulkler
- J. H. Menten
- Langkat
- N.K.P.M.
- Oil exploration in North Sumatra
- Ph. C. Fennema
- S. W. Tromp
- Tamiang oil block
- Van Bemmelen’s The Geology of Indonesia (1949)
- 1883
- 1885
- 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. 7 (petroleum history, Zulkler concession and Fennema drilling), p. 9 (Table 4: Oil production in 1940 and 1941).