ABSTRACT
Singapore, the support actor Oil ex plorers and producers from the US and Europe have been active in Southeast Asia for more than a century, and have been using Singapore as a center from which they would or gan ize expeditions to remote parts of the region, exchange in forma tion, obtain medical, engineering and logistical ser vices, handle fin an cial mat ters and deal with the regional authorities. Leveraging off Singapore’s growing maritime role from the late nine teenth century, these pioneers con trib uted to the making of Southeast Asia’s most de veloped business sup port infrastructure. Royal Dutch Shell traces its early success to Aeilko Jans Zijklert, a 25-yearold Dutch tobacco planter who moved to Sumatra in 1885 and found commercial quantities of oil at the Telaga Tunggal No. 1 well.1
