Nurfadzilah Yahaya_"Indonesian Oil and the Limits of Decolonisation, 1945–1955"

Colonial oil companies wrote their concessions so that ownership rested on documents rather than on wells. They came out of the Second World War with their installations gone and their rights intact. The refineries were destroyed in the retreat of 1942, the Japanese occupation ran the fields for over three years, and the concessions and shares sat safely in Europe and the Caribbean throughout. When oil workers seized the installations at the end of the occupation they took the one thing the documents had always left out, the knowledge of running them. The enterprise they built for the new Republic was staffed by the company's own clerks and foremen, and it kept the old departments and grades so closely that colonial intelligence could track it through prewar employment records. Independence gave Indonesians the running of the industry and half the profits within a decade, while the titles underneath stayed where they were.