Bataafse Petroleum Maatschappij or Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij (lit. 'Batavian Oil Company', colloquially known as BPM) was the Dutch East Indies and later Indonesian subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell oil company established in 1907.
History
The BPM was established in 1907. It was Shell's main oil producing entity in Indonesia (at that time, Dutch East Indies) 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 (North Sumatra), which is considered as the origin of the Royal Dutch Shell. More than 95% of Indonesia's crude oil was commercially produced by BPM in the 1920s. In 1938, the company moved into a new headquarter designed by the architectural firm Fermont-Cuypers. [1]
The dual-listed 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.[2]