Taiwan Today

A picturesque settlement that was once Taiwan’s largest oil town is now wreathed with tung trees and walking trails.
 

Chuhuangkeng in the northern county of Miaoli’s Gongguan Township is one of a kind due to its history as an oil and gas production hub, a legacy that would surprise many Taiwan residents. “The oil and gas industry in Taiwan has a splendid but little known past that we really want to publicize more,” said Wu Yu-hsuan (巫宇軒), cultural heritage section chief of Miaoli County Government’s Culture and Tourism Bureau. Hailing from central Taiwan, Wu himself was unaware of Chuhuangkeng’s story until starting to work for the local government in 2010.

Liquid Fortunes
Oil was first discovered at Chuhuangkeng when residents found yellow-black liquid oozing from cracks between rocks along Houlong Creek in 1817. At the time it was mistaken for sulfur, which led locals to give the area a name that translates literally as “sulphur pit” and is still in use today. In 1861 a private citizen identified the source of the oil, manually dug a 3-meter well and subsequently sold the substance to locals as lamp fuel. This marked the beginning of Taiwan’s oil production era, just two years after the world’s first oil well was sunk in the U.S. in Titusville, Pennsylvania.

Government-operated extraction came under China’s Qing dynasty (1644–1912) in 1877, and exploration to discover oil fields picked up pace during the Japanese rule (1895-1945), with production peaking in the second half of the 1920s. The town’s population began to expand significantly as workers moved in and infrastructure, including a cable car system, was built in 1927. Although the Japanese prospected for oil all around Taiwan, Chuhuangkeng remained its top production site. During the 50-year Japanese era nearly 100 oil wells were sunk in the area, the crude oil from which was refined into petroleum and shipped to Japan.

The production of crude oil steadily declined after the Japanese left Taiwan in 1945, as the resource was heavily depleted. Natural gas, which previously was a marginal fossil fuel resource compared with oil, gradually took center stage with the introduction of advanced deep drilling technology. According to CPC Corporation, the state-owned energy enterprise that extracted oil and gas following the Japanese withdrawal, natural gas is often found alongside crude oil but exists in larger amounts in deeper underground deposits.

In 1959 CPC imported drill rigs from the U.S. and three years later created a highly productive 3,561-meter-deep well that proved Chuhuangkeng was situated atop a deep natural gas deposit. This 106th well shifted the town’s whole economy to natural gas production, creating a boom that peaked around 1990. Production gradually decreased over the following decades, and CPC’s 147th and final well was dug in 2011. To date there are 15 wells in Chuhuangkeng that still extract natural gas, as well as negligible amounts of crude oil. The population of the mountain town has declined from approximately 2,100 in 1958 to several hundred today, partly because of the wide use of advanced, labor-saving equipment.
  Refining Resources
As the gas production era in Chuhuangkeng waned, a new phase of life unfolded. In 2008 the town was officially listed as one of the 10 industrial landscapes in Taiwan, a subcategory of cultural landscape. Buildings and structures like dormitories, offices and clinics were subsequently designated as cultural assets due to their historic value. Renovation of such tangible legacy was undertaken by the local government and CPC. In 2019 the Ministry of Culture approved a local government project to revitalize Chuhuangkeng’s industrial history and heritage under its Reconstruction of Historic Sites initiative for significant locations around Taiwan.
  The majority of the funding for Chuhuangkeng’s revitalization, completed last year, was allocated to restoring historical sites, such as Dormitory No. 13. Built in 1962 for CPC workers and designated as a cultural asset in 2020, the single-story structure underwent renovation that was completed in September 2024. Other restoration efforts include revitalizing historical trails linking preserved buildings and decommissioned oil wells, documenting the stories of retired workers through interviews and highlighting the town’s industrial, historical and ecological legacy. “Chuhuangkeng was once a thriving energy resource hub. It’s great to see it rising again as a unique cultural heritage destination,” said Hsieh Chung-hsiung (謝忠雄), an 83-year-old local resident and former CPC technician.

  The Taiwan Oil Field Exhibition Hall by Houlong Creek underwent a major overhaul by CPC in 2019. Established by the corporation in 1981, the facility educates visitors about the site’s history, the working conditions and life in the area, as well as industry-related science. Since 2023 the renovated buildings have been open to the public via advance booking, and approximately 1,000 visitors have joined guided tours of the premises. CPC has recently issued tenders for guest house operators to rent and repurpose buildings as accommodation to encourage visitors to enjoy the ambience of the small town and savor its distinctive charm. “Chuhuangkeng is an integral part of the country’s industrial achievement. It is valuable to show that industrial heritage can have a new lease of life when the original catalyst is gone,” said Wu. With Taiwan’s sustainable energy success as the wind and solar power industries thrive, looking at past techniques and infrastructure demonstrates how far the country has come.
 

Write to Oscar Chung at mhchung@mofa.gov.tw