Alam Kabeh

In 1942 a handful of U.S. oilmen, in the path of the Japanese advance through Sumatra, fired the Standard-Vacuum Oil Co.'s* $30,000,000 Palembang plant, biggest U.S. refinery in the Far East. Dutch soldiers held off the enemy until the oilmen escaped. The new Japanese proprietors rebuilt the refinery, saw their work undone in two Allied air raids. Few U.S.-owned plants in the Orient had taken such a beating; few staged a faster recovery.

Last week, in the mud flats adjoining the Musi River, in a 50-mile enclave only recently cleared by the Dutch of Indonesian insurgents, Palembang started refining stored crude left by the Japanese. The wells, some dynamited and others partly .destroyed by fire, were just beginning to flow. But tough, ruddy-faced Harry A. Gibbon, who had led Standard's task force to Palembang, hopes to have them in full production soon. By summer, he expects" to have Palembang turning out its prewar 45,000 barrels a day.

Gibbon had planned his operation with care. With food and equipment stacked up in Java and Singapore, Gibbon and 25 oilmen had entered Sumatra soon after war's end. They combed the Japanese prison camps for some 650 Dutch and Eurasian Standard employees. But it was not until the spring of 1946 that Gibbon got his first U.S. shipment of steel and heavy equipment, and was able to begin rebuilding the plant.

To attract workers in a country that had three currencies, all of them worthless in native eyes (Dutch guilders, Japanese "banana money," Indonesian rupees), Gibbon paid his 4,000 laborers partly in food, partly in credits to be redeemed when the currency is stabilized.

The Indonesians did their best to make the wells productive. Fortnight ago, in accordance with a traditional dedication, the workers buried the heads of eight carabaos and eight goats among the wells, lifted their cupped hands toward heaven and intoned the solemn Alam Kabeh--"Greeting to Allah from all the world." The echo will soon be heard on the mainland when Palembang's oil begins to flow through the petroleum-starved East.

*Owned jointly by Standard Oil Co. (N.J.) and Socony-Vacuum Oil Co., Inc.

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