Bataafse Petroleum Maatschappij or Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij (colloquially known as BPM), Dutch for ''Batavian Oil Company'', was the

Dutch East Indies The Dutch East Indies, also known as the Netherlands East Indies ( nl, Nederlands(ch)-Indië; ), was a Dutch colony consisting of what is now Indonesia. It was formed from the nationalised trading posts of the Dutch East India Company, whic ...

and later

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Gui ...

n subsidiary of

Royal Dutch Shell Shell plc is a British multinational oil and gas company headquartered in London, England. Shell is a public limited company with a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and secondary listings on Euronext Amsterdam and the New ...

oil company established in 1907.

History

COLLECTIE TROPENMUSEUM Hoofdgebouw van de Bataafse Petroleum Maatschappij te Batavia TMnr 10014922

The BPM was established in 1907. It was Shell's main oil producing entity in Indonesia (at that time,

) and dominated the Indonesian oil industry during the colonial era, making it one of the largest companies in the colonial economy. The main oil well of BPM was

Pangkalan Brandan Pangkalan Brandan (or Pangkalanbrandan) (''Pangkalanberandan'') is a port town in Langkat Regency, North Sumatra province, Indonesia, forty miles north west of Medan, close to the boundary with Aceh. The area's population is estimated at aroun ...

( North Sumatra), which is considered as the origin of the

. More than 95% of Indonesia's crude oil was commercially produced by BPM in the 1920s. The

dual-listed A dual-listed company or DLC is a corporate structure in which two corporations function as a single operating business through a legal equalization agreement, but retain separate legal identities and stock exchange listings. Virtually all DLCs ar ...

nature of the Royal Dutch Shell meant that BPM was 60 percent owned by the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company, and 40% by the Shell Transport and Trading Company; it acted as a Dutch holding company for the merged Royal Dutch Shell Group along with its UK analogue the ''Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Company''. The two were merged in 2005 creating a single holding structure for Shell. After the

Japanese occupation of Indonesia The Empire of Japan occupied the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) during World War II from March 1942 until after the end of the war in September 1945. It was one of the most crucial and important periods in modern Indonesian history. In ...

, Shell's original well at Pangkalan Brandan was taken over by the Indonesian army. In 1957, Pangkalan Brandan became the main asset of the newly formed Indonesian oil company, Permina, the predecessor of

Pertamina PT Pertamina (Persero), formerly abbreviated from ''Perusahaan Pertambangan Minyak dan Gas Bumi Negara'' (lit. 'State Oil and Natural Gas Mining Company'), is an Indonesian state-owned oil and natural gas corporation based in Jakarta. It was c ...

. In the 1950s, US oil giants Caltex (now

Chevron Chevron (often relating to V-shaped patterns) may refer to: Science and technology * Chevron (aerospace), sawtooth patterns on some jet engines * Chevron (anatomy), a bone * '' Eulithis testata'', a moth * Chevron (geology), a fold in rock la ...

) and Stanvac (now ExxonMobil) invested heavily in Indonesia, dropping the share of BPM to only 34% in 1957, compared to 46% for Caltex and 20% for Stanvac. Eventually, Shell pulled out of Indonesia in 1965 and would only re-enter (in distribution only) in the early 2000s.

References

Cited works

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External links

* {{Authority control Defunct oil companies Shell plc Dutch East Indies Defunct energy companies of Indonesia Defunct energy companies of the Netherlands

History

See also

References

Cited works

External links