Pangkalan Brandan (Pangkalanberandan) is a port town in North Sumatra

North Sumatra

North Sumatra is a province of Indonesia on the Sumatra island. Its capital is Medan. It is the most populous Indonesian province outside of Java. It is slightly larger than Sri Lanka in area.- Geography and population :...

 province, Indonesia

Indonesia

Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...

, forty miles north west of Medan

Medan

- Demography :The city is Indonesia's fourth most populous after Jakarta, Surabaya, and Bandung, and Indonesia's largest city outside of Java island. Much of the population lies outside its city limits, especially in Deli Serdang....

, close to the boundary with Aceh

Aceh

Aceh is a special region of Indonesia, located on the northern tip of the island of Sumatra. Its full name is Daerah Istimewa Aceh , Nanggroë Aceh Darussalam and Aceh . Past spellings of its name include Acheh, Atjeh and Achin...

. The area's population is estimated at around 21,000.

Oil deposits were discovered close to the village by a Dutch tobacco

Tobacco

Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...

 planter, Aeilko Jans Zijklert, in 1885. In June 1890, Zijlker, set up the "Royal Dutch Company for the Working of Petroleum Wells in the Dutch Indies" with its headquarters at Pangkalan Brandan and port facilities at nearby Pangkalan Susu, completed in 1898. The company was one of the two founder companies of Royal Dutch Shell

Royal Dutch Shell

Royal Dutch Shell plc , commonly known as Shell, is a global oil and gas company headquartered in The Hague, Netherlands and with its registered office in London, United Kingdom. It is the fifth-largest company in the world according to a composite measure by Forbes magazine and one of the six...

. formed in February, 1907.
Pangkalan Brandan was noted to be the first area of Indonesia which supported the development of other areas with its rich oil supply.
There has been a proposal to use waste from the local palm-oil industry to generate electricity.