Description
In states that engage in occupation, fossil fuel projects can act as a vector both for the expanding circuit of capital accumulation as well as the state’s consolidation of territorial control over peripheral regions. Multinational petroleum company British Petroleum’s (BP) offshore gas project Tangguh LNG (Liquid Natural Gas) is the single largest resource project in the Indonesian-occupied West Papua province. Despite the Indonesian state’s turbulent and often hostile relationship to foreign petroleum companies, a decades-long alliance has emerged with BP that has facilitated the development of Tangguh LNG. In this paper, I demonstrate that this alliance between the state and the multinational has emerged due to the compatibility of Indonesia’s territorial ambitions in West Papua with BP’s drive to expand its circuit of capital accumulation. Strategically distinguishing these logics allows for a concrete analysis of the ways in which they are imbricated at a particular juncture. Firstly, I trace how West Papua was over decades violently integrated into a world market for oil and gas extraction, production, and export. I then demonstrate how the revenue from Tangguh LNG has played a key role in consolidating the administrative control of various sub-national branches of the Indonesian state over the life, livelihoods, and land of West Papuan people. This analysis of fossil fuel extraction in West Papua, an example of a self-determination struggle against a previously colonised state, provides important nuance to debates concerning the role of state-territorial logics in the capital accumulation process.
