1859 is the year of the drilling of the first Pennsylvanian oil gushers — the founding episode of the modern petroleum industry, and the technical-economic context within which the first scientific investigations of the natural oil wells of the East Indies were undertaken by De Greve (1865), J. H. Menten and S. W. Tromp (early 1860s). The 1859 Pennsylvania oil boom is the indispensable technical-economic background to the entire documentary sequence of East-Indian petroleum geology, and accordingly to the 1883–1885 founding of the northern-Sumatran oil industry that would, by 1940–1941, extend onto Atjeh territory.
The Pennsylvania oil boom and the East-Indian response
Van Bemmelen’s account of the 1859 Pennsylvania oil boom and its East-Indian aftermath reads:
“Since 1859, when the first Pennsylvanian gushers were drilled, a number of scientists started to study the geological features of the known natural oil wells in the East Indies (J. H. MENTEN and S. W. TROMP; DE GREVE, 1865).”
The 1859 Pennsylvania oil boom — inaugurated by the drilling of Edwin Drake’s well at Titusville, Pennsylvania, on 27 August 1859 — established the technical and economic feasibility of large-scale petroleum production, and accordingly triggered scientific investigation of natural oil occurrences worldwide. In the East Indies, the response was the work of De Greve (1865) and of Menten and Tromp (early 1860s), who together compiled the first scientific record of the East-Indian oil seepages — a record that would subsequently form the documentary basis for the 1872 drilling at Madja in West Java (the first drilling for oil in the East Indies), the 1883 Zulkler concession in North Sumatra, and the 1885 Fennema-led Telaga Said drilling success.
The earlier Achem reference
Van Bemmelen’s petroleum history also records a much earlier — and possibly apocryphal — reference to the use of petroleum in the Atjeh region: “it is further told that the king of Achem used burning oil from a well in Deli to attract attention of Portuguese ships in order to rob them.” The reference is to the sultan of Atjeh (Achem = Atjeh, in the older English spelling) using burning petroleum from a Deli well as a navigational decoy to lure Portuguese ships into Atjehnese waters for plunder. The Deli reference is significant because Deli is the region of the East Coast of Sumatra immediately to the south of the Atjeh border, and the same region in which the 1883 Zulkler concession and the 1885 Fennema-led Telaga Said drilling would take place. The anecdote is undated, but its association with “Portuguese ships” suggests a sixteenth- or early-seventeenth-century context — that is, the period of Atjehnese-Portuguese conflict in the straits of Malacca.
Van Bemmelen also notes that the presence of oil in the Indies “is known from GERINI (‘Researches in Ptolomy’s Geography of Eastern Asia’) who discloses its existence to be known as far back as 954 A.D.” — a reference to the much earlier documentary record of East-Indian petroleum. The combination of the 954 A.D. Gerini reference, the anecdotal Achem-Deli burning-oil story, the 1596 Linschoten reference to a Sumatran well that produced “pure balm”, and the 1859 Pennsylvania-oil-boom-triggered scientific investigations together establishes the long documentary prelude to the 1883–1885 founding of the northern-Sumatran oil industry.
Significance
1859 is significant for the encyclopedia of Acheh history because it is the year of the drilling of the first Pennsylvanian oil gushers — the founding episode of the modern petroleum industry, and the technical-economic context within which the first scientific investigations of the East-Indian oil wells were undertaken. The 1859 Pennsylvania oil boom is accordingly the indispensable technical-economic background to the entire documentary sequence of East-Indian petroleum geology, and to the 1883–1885 founding of the northern-Sumatran oil industry that would, by 1940–1941, extend onto Atjeh territory. The anecdotal Achem-Deli burning-oil story recorded by Van Bemmelen — though undated and possibly apocryphal — is also part of the wider pre-1859 documentary record of Atjeh-region petroleum, and it accordingly establishes the longer historical context within which the colonial-era oil industry of northern Sumatra should be understood.
See Also
- Acheh
- De Greve
- J. H. Menten
- J. Zulkler
- Oil exploration in North Sumatra
- Ph. C. Fennema
- S. W. Tromp
- Telaga Said
- Van Bemmelen’s The Geology of Indonesia (1949)
- 1865
- 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, the 1859 Pennsylvania oil boom, the king of Achem burning-oil anecdote, and the Gerini 954 A.D. reference).