The businessman who saved Royal Dutch from bankruptcy by turning it into a great oil company

Even though we may not be paying attention, oil always flows through the subsoil of our lives, as a fundamental element of most activities we carry out. But from time to time, it abandons its discretion and becomes part of the news headlines, never for a good cause. Today we are once again living through one of those periods when information about the price of crude oil torments us and threatens our way of life. Black gold has been the great fuel of capitalist society since the second half of the 19th century, but while today the big players are faceless multinationals, for many decades those who made and unmade things in this sector were well-known figures, such as Jean Baptiste August Kessler.

The affairs of the global world in the mid-19th century led Kessler to be born in present-day Indonesia, which at that time was a territory of the Dutch East Indies. After abandoning his university studies in the Netherlands, the land of his progenitors, he returned to his birthplace to try to make his way in life. Before changing his residence, he had time to gain some experience working in a bank that, precisely, had many ties to Asian colonies. His life seemed destined for the trade of colonial products, as his father – a ship captain – had already done, but the hand of his father-in-law changed everything.

The entrepreneur Aeilko Jans Zijlker, who had created a small oil exploration company, died suddenly in 1890 and the firm went into crisis. Without its leader, the Maatschappij tot Exploitatie van Petroleumbronnen in Nederlandsch-Indië (Company for the Exploitation of Oil Wells in the Dutch Indies, later known simply as Royal Dutch), was on the verge of bankruptcy, and it was then that Kessler's father-in-law, a member of the board of directors, thought that perhaps his son-in-law could do something about it. The reality is that the company had concessions and had discovered oil, but the technical resources were very precarious and there was significant mismanagement. He accepted the challenge, and what he found was even worse than he had been told.

If anything characterized Kessler, it was his drive, a fundamental aspect for pulling the company out of the hole it was in. To make matters even more complicated, the company's main operations were in Sumatra, where the climate is very hostile and tropical diseases are common. The joy over the first drops of oil that gushed through the company's pipelines in early 1892 did not last long, because the results of the operations soon turned around and the specter of bankruptcy once again loomed over the business. Kessler's persistence allowed for the discovery of new oil deposits that, this time, brought about the great business leap he desired. The price he had paid was the deterioration of his health, a circumstance that would soon take its toll.

One of Kessler's last successes was the signing of a young man from the Netherlands Trading Society (today, ABN-Amro) to whom he offered to join the Royal Dutch. This young prodigy was named Henri Deterding, whom we spoke about during the summer four years ago and who would become a legend at the helm of the company. Another important legacy was the start of talks with the head of the British Shell, Marcus Samuel, in order to merge the two companies. As we said, after a decade of intense work in the Indies, Kessler's health had deteriorated greatly, to the point that in December 1900 he was forced to take a break and travel to the Netherlands to recover. But he was no longer in time, because when his ship docked at the port of Naples, he suffered a heart attack and died. His life ended just one day before his forty-seventh birthday. A short life, but with much work done.

Kessler's successor at the head of the company was none other than Deterding, destined to lead the Royal Dutch for thirty-six years. In 1907, Deterding and Samuel agreed to the merger for which Kessler had laid the first foundations and, many years later, when Deterding himself retired, the one who would take over the leadership of the Royal Dutch Shell would be August Kessler Jr., that is, the son of our protagonist, with whom a cycle in the company's history would be closed.