WATCHING THE WORLD SHELL'S ANNIVERSARY

For oil companies with long and distinguished histories, anniversaries are something to savor.

In Southeast Asia, the Royal Dutch/Shell Group has been savoring 100 years of operations that started with the arrival in Singapore of two employees of M. Samuel & Co. to set up the first of a chain of oil storage depots.

Six years later M. Samuel & Co. became Shell Transport & Trading, which in 1907 merged with Royal Dutch Petroleum Co., another organization with its roots in Southeast Asia, to form the basis of the present multinational group.

A BEGINNING IN SINGAPORE

Anniversaries usually trigger an orgy of nostalgia and rummaging through archives to discover how business was conducted in previous eras.

Shell is no exception. Its trawl through records of the 1890s has shown that even in those days the company was a thrifty organization and struck an advantageous bargain to gain access to the island that now houses its giant Pulau Bukom refinery at Singapore.

The two men sent to establish the Singapore base, Marcus and Joel Abraham, members of the Samuel family, paid $3,000 for a 20 acre island off Singapore complete with its fresh water supply and a deepwater shipping anchorage.

The oil trade in those days was dominated by American companies, notably Standard Oil, that shipped products across the Pacific. To compete, Samuel knew it would have to undercut American prices and looked to cheap products then available from the booming Soviet oil industry.

To implement the strategy the company not only needed the first bulk storage facility in Southeast Asia but a tanker the authorities judged safe enough to transit the Suez Canal.

On the newly acquired island, a jetty, three 1,500 ton storage tanks, and connecting pipelines were in service by the following year to witness the maiden voyage of the SS Murex, the first purpose built oil carrier to win approval for passage through the Suez Canal.

Murex had on board 3,000 tons of Soviet kerosine loaded at the Black Sea port of Batum. It took 12 hr to unload but enabled Samuel to trim 500 off the local kerosine price.

Murex and a fleet of similar tankers followed the same route from the U.S.S.R. to Southeast Asia and fueled the expansion of the Samuel empire in the region. In 1892, Murex made it first call in Bangkok, helping establish what is now Shell Co. of Thailand.

SELF-RELIANCE

Storage and marketing facilities began to appear throughout the region and in 1897, the year the trade name Shell first appeared, Royal Dutch built its first depot in Singapore, relying not on Soviet products but its own production in Sumatra.

Shell's attempts to establish a local oil supply were less successful, and 10 years later the two companies merged to tackle renewed competition from Standard Oil.

Shell is now a major producer and marketer throughout the Pacific Rim, while Singapore has progressed from a small storage depot to the biggest refining complex in the world.