Qualla: From Customs House to Energy Story

From Customs House to Energy Story: Introduction

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yu Chu Chin, CC BY-SA 4.0. The tunnel through the middle of the building is easy to miss. Marked with the faded words "H.H. Customs House," it once allowed cars to pass through what was, for decades, the most important structure on the Brunei River: the Royal Customs and Excise Building, a 400-foot-long concrete wharf where everything entering or leaving the sultanate was weighed, taxed, and recorded. Completed in 1956, the building served as Brunei's administrative backbone until the creation of Muara Port in 1972 rendered it obsolete. For years it sat largely dormant on the waterfront. Then, in 2022, Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah reopened it as something entirely different: the Brunei Energy Hub, an interactive museum telling the story of the resource that made modern Brunei possible.

Image: Yu Chu Chin | CC BY-SA 4.0

From Customs House to Energy Story: The Wharf That Built a Nation

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ravi Dwivedi, CC BY-SA 4.0. Brunei's Customs Department is one of the country's oldest government agencies, established in the early 1900s under the authority of British Residents to oversee the flow of goods through the sultanate. The original wharf, built at the end of Jalan Sultan between the 1920s and 1...

Image: Ravi Dwivedi | CC BY-SA 4.0

From Customs House to Energy Story: Black Gold Under Borneo

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yu Chu Chin, CC BY-SA 4.0. The story the museum tells begins not at the wharf but in the ground beneath Seria, a coastal town 100 kilometers to the southwest. On 5 April 1929, oil began flowing from the S-1 well, drilled to a depth of 978 feet using the cable-tool method. That first well, operated by the B...

Image: Yu Chu Chin | CC BY-SA 4.0

From Customs House to Energy Story: Four Galleries, One Timeline

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yu Chu Chin, CC BY-SA 4.0. The museum is organized as a journey through time. The second gallery, "Our Present: The Nation's Aspiration," maps the modern oil and gas value chain through interactive walls and touch stations, showing how Brunei satisfies global energy demands from a territory smaller than De...

Image: Yu Chu Chin | CC BY-SA 4.0

From Customs House to Energy Story: A Riverside Second Life

Thu, 02 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pangalau, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Brunei Energy Hub sits on the Dermaga Diraja waterfront in Pusat Bandar, the heart of Bandar Seri Begawan, with the Raja Isteri Pengiran Anak Hajah Saleha Bridge arching behind it. An observation deck on the upper level offers views across the Brunei River to Kampong Ayer, th...

Image: Pangalau | CC BY-SA 4.0