The Petroleum Industry in Indonesia before the Second World War

Lindblad, J. Thomas

doi:10.1080/00074918812331335569

Cited by 9 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…53 In Dutch Kalimantan, oil was discovered within the realm of Kutai and Bulungan sultanates at the turn of the century. 54 Once oil was discovered, the Dutch started to deprive the sultans of their authority and place their realms under the effective direct control of the colonial government, whose headquarters was in Batavia on the island of Java. 55 Dutch Kalimantan started to be administered merely as part of the Dutch East Indies, not as separate sultanates, and the rulers lost political power.…”

Section: Methods and Case Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Colonial origins of the resource curse: endogenous sovereignty and authoritarianism in Brunei

Mukoyama

2019

Democratization

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The literature on the political "resource curse" has recently seen heated debates over the average causal effects of oil on democracy and the generalizability of the theory. One of the reasons these disagreements remain unresolved is that the causal mechanisms of the resource curse receive little scholarly attention and historical and international aspects are frequently overlooked. To address these problems, this study investigates the relationship between oil and the political regime in Brunei, arguably the most understudied state among the archetypes of the resource curse, extending the time frame back to the very beginning of oil exploration during the colonial period. It uncovers a previously overlooked causal process by which oil affected the emergence of authoritarianism. It shows that in the case of Brunei (and potentially some Persian Gulf monarchies), sovereignty is endogenous to the resource curse. That is, oil, together with indirect colonial rule, affected the creation of the state, and this state-formation process contributed to the long-standing autocracy. This study contributes to the resource curse literature by identifying a new mechanism of the resource curse, showing that we need to reconsider the way we apply the potential outcomes approach, and highlighting the importance of historical and international factors.

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Section: Methods and Case Selectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Colonial origins of the resource curse: endogenous sovereignty and authoritarianism in Brunei

Mukoyama

2019

Democratization

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“…Following a period of exploration, commercial oil production in Sumatra (by the Royal Dutch Oil Company) started as early as 1890 and expanded steadily across the island, initially under the direct control of the Dutch colonial government until Indonesia became independent in 1945 (Lindblad 1989), and subsequently mostly by private companies in partnership with the state oil company PERTAMINA (Nordås, Vatne, and Heum 2003). This investment, coupled with strong political institutions (Ascher 2012), made Indonesia a major oil exporting nation and drove much economic and infrastructure development (Colombijn 2002).…”

Section: Exposurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…In Southeast Asia, where the widespread occurrence of peat has been recognized in the scientific literature for over a century (Wichmann 1910), much has been written on agriculturally driven land use change and drainage, which have led to huge carbon losses from peatlands through oxidation and burning (Page et al 2002;Miettinen, Shi, and Liew 2012a;Miettinen et al 2017aMiettinen et al , 2017b. There has been little research on the impacts of the oil and gas industry on peatlands here, despite the long history of the industry in the region (since the 1870s : Lindblad 1989) and the potential for further expansion in, for example, Indonesia (Satyana 2017) and Papua New Guinea (Kawagle 2007). The newly recognized peatlands in the Amazon and Congo basins, densely forested and located in sparsely populated regions with few roads, are difficult for researchers to access; scientific understanding of their distribution and ecology is still at an early stage.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The vulnerability of tropical peatlands to oil and gas exploration and extraction

Lawson

Coronado

Andueza

et al. 2022

Progress in Environmental Geography

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Tropical peatlands store globally significant quantities of carbon and are ecologically and culturally important, but little is known about their vulnerability to oil and gas exploration and extraction. Here, we analyse the exposure of tropical peatlands to the activities of the petroleum industry and review what is known about the sensitivity of peatlands to these activities. We find that 8.3% (107,000 km2) of the total area of tropical peatlands overlaps with a 30-km buffer area around oil and gas infrastructure. Major areas of overlap include the Sumatra Basin (Indonesia), the Niger Delta (Nigeria) and the Putumayo-Oriente-Marañón Basin (Peru/Ecuador/Colombia). Documented environmental impacts include deforestation and habitat loss associated with the exploration and development of oil fields, and contamination from spills of oil and produced water (well brine). Peatlands, and the ecosystem services they provide, are sensitive to these impacts due to unique aspects of their ecology and hydrology, the easy spread of contamination by flowing water, the long-term storage of contaminants in peat, and the slow degradation of oil under anoxic, waterlogged conditions. Given the potential negative consequences for human health, resource security, biodiversity, and carbon storage, we propose a research agenda to provide an improved evidence base to support effective governance.

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“…Dutch engineers brought thousands of Javanese and Chinese workers to the island and also started drilling on neighbouring islands and in the shallow waters of the estuaries. In 1924, some twelve thousand people worked in the oil industry on Tarakan, which produced a third of all oil in the Dutch East Indies (Lindblad 1989). The oil companies built roads, a harbour and an airstrip as well as simple housing for the thousands of labourers who were brought there.…”

Section: The Oil Frontiermentioning

confidence: 99%

Development Zones in Asian Borderlands

2021

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Identifying Development ZonesThis volume emerged from a writing workshop on development zones in Asia, at Aarhus University, Denmark in June 2019.1 Irrespective of ethnographic variation, all contributors at the workshop described similar and simultaneous processes across different parts of Asia: enclaves, socio-spatial transformations, infrastructure, sovereignty and cross-border politics, localised agency. Different regions across Asian borderlands were connected through a global circuit of extraction, production, consumption and mobility. These processes, in turn, were shaped by national/regional politics and ideas of development. The similarities running through all the papers presented at the workshop highlighted the absence of a framework encapsulating this phenomenon in all its diversity. With this volume, we aim to initiate a conversation towards creating a conceptual platform through which to understand, analyse and verbalise this phenomenon. We start this conversation by identifying three interrelated characteristics of development zones -porosity, informality and spatial-temporal unboundedness -shared by all development zones to different degrees.Erik Harms' (2015) description of the porosity of urban enclaves provides a useful starting place for thinking about development zones. Urban enclaves, with their high walls and gated communities, may appear to be completely sealed off from the outside world. However, according to Harms, 'demarcations and distinctions of public and private that mark the idealized enclave are compromised and breached by social and spatial processes and practices of porosity' (Harms 2015, 153). Similarly, development zones can be understood as enclaves that are demarcated from surrounding areas through tangible markers, administrative regulations and/or social practices. Akin to the urban enclaves described by Harms, development zones are also characterised by the movement of humans, goods, services, technology, ideas and so forth between and within different spheres of (political, social) activities that gravitate towards economic zones. Development zones in Asian borderlands exhibit porosity on different scales, especially between global, national and situated, localised practices, often resulting in a recalibration of established spatial and socio-cultural relations.Porosity works both ways: ideas, technology, people and materials move in and out of the development zone. Such movement is directly proportional to the level of informality between different actors/institutions, regulatory bodies and so on. The development zone, which comprises many moving parts, is dynamic: it expands and contracts in response to influences from within and without. This leads to a variation in the concomitant reconfiguration of space, power and the tangible, material that determines choices and outcomes for those living within the development zone. Such inherent porosity enables the proliferation of development zonesAuthor's version

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The Petroleum Industry in Indonesia before the Second World War

Cited by 9 publications

References 2 publications

Colonial origins of the resource curse: endogenous sovereignty and authoritarianism in Brunei

Colonial origins of the resource curse: endogenous sovereignty and authoritarianism in Brunei

The vulnerability of tropical peatlands to oil and gas exploration and extraction

Development Zones in Asian Borderlands

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