Tarakan is an island

Island

An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, cays or keys. An island in a river or lake may be called an eyot , or holm...

 off the coast of East Kalimantan

East Kalimantan

East Kalimantan is the second largest Indonesian province, located on the Kalimantan region on the east of Borneo island. The resource-rich province has two major cities, Samarinda and Balikpapan...

, 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...

. It is a marshy island situated in the eastern Celebes Sea

Celebes Sea

The Celebes Sea of the western Pacific Ocean is bordered on the north by the Sulu Archipelago and Sulu Sea and Mindanao Island of the Philippines, on the east by the Sangihe Islands chain, on the south by Sulawesi, and on the west by Kalimantan in Indonesia...

, off the northeastern coast of Borneo

Borneo

Borneo is the third largest island in the world and is located north of Java Island, Indonesia, at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia....

. The island occupies an area of 117 square miles (303 km²).

Petroleum

Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 explorers noted oil seepages

Petroleum

Petroleum or crude oil is a naturally occurring, flammable liquid consisting of a complex mixture of hydrocarbons of various molecular weights and other liquid organic compounds, that are found in geologic formations beneath the Earth's surface. Petroleum is recovered mostly through oil drilling...

 in 1863. Oil extraction began in 1906. Tarakan oil field

Oil field

An oil field is a region with an abundance of oil wells extracting petroleum from below ground. Because the oil reservoirs typically extend over a large area, possibly several hundred kilometres across, full exploitation entails multiple wells scattered across the area...

 produced a light

Light crude oil

Light crude oil is liquid petroleum that has a low density and flows freely at room temperature. It has a low viscosity, low specific gravity and high API gravity due to the presence of a high proportion of light hydrocarbon fractions. It generally has a low wax content...

, sour crude oil with an unusually low pour point

Pour point

The pour point of a liquid is the lowest temperature at which it will pour or flow under prescribed conditions. It is a rough indication of the lowest temperature at which oil is readily pumpable. In crude oil a high pour point is generally assosiated with a high paraffin content. And typically...

. By 1940 the island had an oil refinery

Oil refinery

An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where crude oil is processed and refined into more useful petroleum products, such as gasoline, diesel fuel, asphalt base, heating oil, kerosene, and liquefied petroleum gas...

 with four petroleum loading piers, and was one of the five largest petroleum processing centers in the East Indies

East Indies

East Indies is a term used by Europeans from the 16th century onwards to identify what is now known as Indian subcontinent or South Asia, Southeastern Asia, and the islands of Oceania, including the Malay Archipelago and the Philippines...

.

World War II

Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

ese oil fields in Sakhalin

Sakhalin

Sakhalin or Saghalien, is a large island in the North Pacific, lying between 45°50' and 54°24' N.It is part of Russia, and is Russia's largest island, and is administered as part of Sakhalin Oblast...

 and Formosa

Formosa

Formosa or Ilha Formosa is a Portuguese historical name for Taiwan , literally meaning, "Beautiful Island". The term may also refer to:-Places:* Formosa Strait, another name for the Taiwan Strait...

 provided only about ten percent of the petroleum needed to sustain Japanese industry. Reserves of California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

 crude oil at Japanese refineries would have been exhausted in less than two years at the rate of consumption when United States terminated exports to Japan on 26 July 1941. Japan initiated hostilities against the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and the United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 four months later in preparation for seizing alternative sources of petroleum in the East Indies. Japan declared war on the Netherlands East Indies on 10 January 1942; and Japanese troops landed

Battle of Tarakan (1942)

The Battle of Tarakan took place on January 11–12, 1942. Even though Tarakan was only a small marshy island at northeastern Borneo in the Netherlands East Indies, but the 700 oil wells, oil refinery and airfield on it, was one of the main objectives for the Empire of Japan in the Pacific War...

 on Tarakan the following day. Dutch forces had declared war on Japan a month earlier, and sabotage

Sabotage

Sabotage is a deliberate action aimed at weakening another entity through subversion, obstruction, disruption, or destruction. In a workplace setting, sabotage is the conscious withdrawal of efficiency generally directed at causing some change in workplace conditions. One who engages in sabotage is...

d the oil field and refinery prior to surrender.

Japan had captured the Miri

Miri

Miri is a city in northern Sarawak, Malaysia, on the island of Borneo. It is the second largest city in Sarawak, with a population of about 300,000, and the government administrative centre of Miri District in Miri Division....

 oil field in December, and proceeded to capture oil fields and refineries at Balikpapan

Balikpapan

Balikpapan is a seaport city on the eastern coast of the island of Borneo, Indonesia, in the East Kalimantan province, a resource-rich region well known for its timber, mining, and petroleum export products. Two harbors, Semayang and Kariangau , and the Sepinggan International Airport are the main...

 in January, Sumatra

Sumatra

Sumatra is an island in western Indonesia, westernmost of the Sunda Islands. It is the largest island entirely in Indonesia , and the sixth largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 with a population of 50,365,538...

 in February, and Java

Java

Java is an island of Indonesia. With a population of 135 million , it is the world's most populous island, and one of the most densely populated regions in the world. It is home to 60% of Indonesia's population. The Indonesian capital city, Jakarta, is in west Java...

 in March. Oil technicians accompanied the invading troops in attempts to maintain production at captured facilities. A team of one thousand additional petroleum engineers

Petroleum engineering

Petroleum engineering is an engineering discipline concerned with the activities related to the production of hydrocarbons, which can be either crude oil or natural gas. Subsurface activities are deemed to fall within the upstream sector of the oil and gas industry, which are the activities of...

 and technicians sailed from Japan aboard Taiyo Maru, but nearly 800 drowned when the ship was sunk southwest of Kyushu

Kyushu

is the third largest island of Japan and most southwesterly of its four main islands. Its alternate ancient names include , , and . The historical regional name is referred to Kyushu and its surrounding islands....

 by USS Grenadier

USS Grenadier (SS-210)

USS Grenadier , a Tambor-class submarine, was the first ship of the United States Navy to be named for the grenadier fish, relatives of cod that are very common in bathyal and abyssal habitats....

 on 8 May 1942. Despite this loss, Tarakan crude oil (mixed with lesser quantities of Manchuria

Manchuria

Manchuria is a historical name given to a large geographic region in northeast Asia. Depending on the definition of its extent, Manchuria usually falls entirely within the People's Republic of China, or is sometimes divided between China and Russia. The region is commonly referred to as Northeast...

n oil shale

Oil shale

Oil shale, an organic-rich fine-grained sedimentary rock, contains significant amounts of kerogen from which liquid hydrocarbons called shale oil can be produced...

 distillates) became the primary feedstock for Japanese diesel fuel in 1942 while reserve supplies of California crude oil remained the primary feedstock for Japanese gasoline

Gasoline

Gasoline , or petrol , is a toxic, translucent, petroleum-derived liquid that is primarily used as a fuel in internal combustion engines. It consists mostly of organic compounds obtained by the fractional distillation of petroleum, enhanced with a variety of additives. Some gasolines also contain...

 and residual fuels until 1943.

Tarakan oil field production reached 350,000 barrels per month by early 1944, but Japan no longer had enough oil tanker

Oil tanker

An oil tanker, also known as a petroleum tanker, is a merchant ship designed for the bulk transport of oil. There are two basic types of oil tankers: the crude tanker and the product tanker. Crude tankers move large quantities of unrefined crude oil from its point of extraction to refineries...

s to transport this volume to Japanese refineries. Without adequate supplies of refined residual fuel oil for the Battle of the Philippine Sea

Battle of the Philippine Sea

The Battle of the Philippine Sea was a decisive naval battle of World War II which effectively eliminated the Imperial Japanese Navy's ability to conduct large-scale carrier actions. It took place during the United States' amphibious invasion of the Mariana Islands during the Pacific War...

 Japanese aircraft carriers refueled with unrefined Tarakan crude oil in June of 1944. This un-desalted

Desalter

A desalter is a process unit on an oil refinery that removes salt from the crude oil. The salt is dissolved in the water in the crude oil, not in the crude oil itself. The desalting is usually the first process in crude oil refining. The salt content after the desalter is usually measured in PTB -...

 crude oil damaged boiler

Boiler

A boiler is a closed vessel in which water or other fluid is heated. The heated or vaporized fluid exits the boiler for use in various processes or heating applications.-Materials:...

 tubes, and the un-removed naphtha

Naphtha

Naphtha normally refers to a number of different flammable liquid mixtures of hydrocarbons, i.e., a component of natural gas condensate or a distillation product from petroleum, coal tar or peat boiling in a certain range and containing certain hydrocarbons. It is a broad term covering among the...

 fraction volatilized to form explosive atmospheres

Flammability limit

Flammability limits, also called flammable limits, give the proportion of combustible gases in a mixture, between which limits this mixture is flammable. Gas mixtures consisting of combustible, oxidizing, and inert gases are only flammable under certain conditions. The lower flammable limit ...

 contributing to the loss of aircraft carriers Taihō

Japanese aircraft carrier Taiho

was an aircraft carrier of the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. With a heavily armored hull and flight deck , she represented a major departure in Japanese carrier design and was expected to not only survive multiple bomb, torpedo or shell hits but also continue fighting effectively...

, Shōkaku

Japanese aircraft carrier Shokaku

Shōkaku was an aircraft carrier of the Imperial Japanese Navy, the lead ship of her class. Along with her sister ship , she took part in several key naval battles during the Pacific War, including the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands...

, and Hiyō

Japanese aircraft carrier Hiyo

Hiyō was a of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Begun as an ocean liner in 1939, she was purchased by the Navy Ministry in 1941 for conversion to an aircraft carrier...

. The last Japanese tanker left Tarakan in July, 1944, allied bomb

Bomb

A bomb is any of a range of explosive weapons that only rely on the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy...

ing raids damaged the oil field facilities later that year; and Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n troops ended

Battle of Tarakan (1945)

The Battle of Tarakan was the first stage in the Borneo campaign of 1945. It began with an amphibious landing by Australian forces on 1 May, code-named Operation Oboe One...

Japanese occupation in June, 1945.