Between energy sovereignty and indigenous rights: a legal pluralism critique of the warim block auction plan in Eastern Indonesia

Indonesia’s pursuit of large-scale hydrocarbon expansion in Papua, despite ecological costs and unresolved Indigenous land claims, is often framed in terms of national energy sovereignty. This article argues that this explanation is descriptive rather than analytical and situates the planned re-auction of the Warim Block within the political economy of fossil capital accumulation. The Block contains estimated reserves of 27 billion barrels of oil and 47 trillion cubic feet of gas, while approximately 9 percent of its area overlaps with Lorentz National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and Amungme customary territory. Combining normative legal analysis, critical discourse analysis, and political economy, informed by David Harvey, Andreas Malm, Jason Moore, and Tim Di Muzio, the study examines how state law converts customary territory into a capitalisable asset while treating conservation status as negotiable when extractive interests prevail. Legal and government materials are triangulated with independent monitoring and human rights reporting on comparable operations in Amungme territory. The analysis finds that distributive, procedural, and recognition injustices reflect structural dependence on hydrocarbon capitalisation. It argues that FPIC must operate as a substantive veto grounded in legal pluralism, alongside structural fiscal reform.