Greater than a decade in the past, Canadian miners prospecting for diamonds in western Greenland noticed on the horizon an enormous white hump.
They known as it White Mountain and shortly found it was a deposit of anorthosite, a salt-and-pepper colour mineral utilized in paints, glass fibers, flame retardants and different industries. The identical mineral creates a ghostly glow on the moon’s floor.
The White Mountain deposit proved to be a number of miles lengthy and several other miles broad, and “solely God is aware of how deep it goes,” stated Bent Olsvig Jensen, the managing director of Lumina Sustainable Supplies, the corporate mining the world.
Lumina is backed by European and Canadian buyers, however Mr. Jensen stated it wasn’t straightforward to show the deposit right into a mountain of money.
“You can’t do exploration all 12 months spherical; you’re within the Arctic,” he defined.
He informed of fierce winds grounding helicopters and knocking out communications, pack ice blocking ships and temperatures dropping to such a dreadful low — generally minus 40 levels Fahrenheit — that the hydraulic fluid powering the corporate’s digging machines “turns into like butter.”
Sitting in Lumina’s humble places of work in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, with moist snow flakes scissoring down exterior the home windows, Mr. Jensen introduced a dose of sobriety to all of the discuss of Greenland because the land of incalculable mineral riches. He famous that although the island has dozens of exploratory initiatives, there are solely two lively mines: his and a small gold operation.
The big semiautonomous island within the Arctic has seized the world’s consideration after President Trump insisted in January that the US take it over. A part of the attraction is its uncommon earths minerals which might be important to high-tech industries and a supply of competitors the world over.
China dominates on the earth’s crucial minerals, and has severely restricted the export of sure minerals to the US. The Trump administration, decided to safe mineral belongings abroad, has turned to high-pressure techniques. The pure assets settlement that Ukraine was all set to signal with the administration till the talks spectacularly blew up on Friday was centered on crucial minerals.
The European Union is simply as fixated. It just lately signed a strategic minerals cope with Rwanda, which is suspected of fomenting instability in mineral-rich Congo subsequent door.
It must be no shock, then, that Mr. Trump and his allies are enthusiastic about Greenland’s mineral scene. Vice President JD Vance has spoken of Greenland’s “unimaginable pure assets,” and Republican senators just lately held a listening to on “Greenland’s Geostrategic Significance,” highlighting its uncommon earths.
Tech giants like Invoice Gates and Jeff Bezos, together with a few of Mr. Trump’s allies, together with Howard Lutnick, his commerce secretary, have invested in corporations prospecting right here. In response to a current Danish examine, 31 of 34 supplies outlined as crucial by the European Union, like lithium and titanium, are discovered on the island.
However for each sq. on the periodic desk that Greenland can fill, there’s a good longer listing of challenges.
In addition to the acute climate, the island has fewer than 100 miles of roads, solely 56,000 residents (which suggests a tiny labor pool) and some small ports.
Equally daunting for miners is Greenland’s environmentalist foyer. Many Greenlanders say they want extra mining to grow to be economically and politically unbiased of Denmark, which retains it afloat with a whole lot of thousands and thousands of {dollars} in annual subsidies.
However Greenlanders have additionally expressed warning about any new heavy business. They’re protecting of their setting, which is being shaken up by local weather change: The Arctic is warming almost 4 instances as quick as the remainder of the world, which can most probably make the mineral assets extra accessible.
The island’s governing political social gathering swept into workplace 4 years in the past on an environmentalist platform and shut down some of the promising mining initiatives. The following elections are on March 11, and, together with independence from Denmark and nearer relations with the US, safeguarding the setting is on the high of the agenda.
For a lot of Greenlanders, nature is part of their id and one thing they hook up with by means of fishing, searching, mountain climbing and spending time open air.
“We’ve got lived with nature for so long as we’ve been right here, in sustainable methods,” stated Ellen Kristensen, an environmentalist in South Greenland.
Not removed from her group is the small gold mine. Amaroq Minerals, which is backed by Icelandic, Canadian and different Western buyers, extracted its first gold in November. Its chief government, Eldur Olafsson, says the remoteness of his mine means the corporate needs to be self-sufficient in vitality, provides and transportation — nearly every thing.
“Working in Greenland is in contrast to the rest,” he stated.
The Danes, who’ve managed Greenland for greater than 300 years, have had blended success. Danish engineers found an enormous provide of cryolite within the late 18th century. Cryolite was a part of aluminum manufacturing, and Danish operators mined it till the Nineteen Eighties, when artificial options grew to become broadly obtainable.
The Danes made billions, and plenty of Greenlanders say they have been exploited. The identical complaints have been lodged towards a big coal mine that Denmark developed final century, although it closed within the Nineteen Seventies.
Greenland is suffering from shuttered initiatives and deserted websites. A ruby mine close to the east coast closed in 2022 amid hovering money owed. Across the similar time, Greenland’s authorities formally deserted its oil ambitions, citing the shortage of business viability and the unacceptable environmental dangers.
Even the seek for diamonds has but to result in a commercially viable mine.
Nowadays, a lot of the curiosity lies in uncommon earths, however an enormous uncommon earth mine in southern Greenland stays a cautionary story.
Power Transition Minerals, an Australian mining enterprise with a large funding from a Chinese language firm, claims its web site in Greenland has one of many world’s largest deposits of uncommon earth oxides. The corporate spent greater than $100 million creating it, solely to have Greenland’s governing social gathering, Inuit Ataqatigiit, which had campaigned on killing the mission, do precisely that.
The opposition was strongest in Narsaq, the city closest to the positioning, the place residents feared radioactive contamination. Uranium is usually present in deposits of uncommon earth minerals, and the priority was that the mine may ship poisonous mud floating over the group.
Among the many residents main the protests was Ms. Kristensen, whose husband is a sheep farmer. “No person desires to purchase meat from sheep grazing subsequent to a uranium mine,” she stated.
Like many others, she marched by means of Narsaq’s snowy streets carrying shiny yellow indicators that stated in Greenlandic language, “Urani? Naamik,” which suggests: “Uranium? No.”
The mining firm says that its operations are protected and that it has accomplished copious environmental research proving so. It’s combating the choice, and the dispute is tied up in arbitration and court docket circumstances.
China has invested in different joint ventures in Greenland, however none have panned out, both due to stalled manufacturing or heavy monetary burdens. Nonetheless, China’s chief, Xi Jinping, has pushed to develop cooperation with Denmark within the Arctic, selling his nation as a polar energy.
China has constructed analysis stations and icebreakers to stamp its presence at every finish of the earth, and it has proposed a “Silk Highway on Ice” — an internet of transport routes and investments that will embed China within the Arctic.
A part of the rationale Mr. Trump is so covetous of Greenland is he desires to field out China. He stated that China has “boats everywhere.”
One Greenlander working to assist Mr. Trump is Jørgen Boassen, a bricklayer who says he has adopted American politics since he was a teen and was immediately drawn to Mr. Trump. Mr. Boassen campaigned door to door for him in the US final election and was invited to inauguration actions.
Mr. Trump, Mr. Boassen says, is “a person price betting on.”
In January, Mr. Boassen helped set up a go to by Donald Trump Jr. to Nuuk. The youthful Trump insisted it was a personal journey, and it appears he didn’t do a lot in addition to sightseeing for a number of hours and internet hosting a dinner for Trump supporters and a few individuals off the road.
Just a few weeks later, Mr. Boassen guided round Tom Dans, an adviser on Arctic affairs to Mr. Trump throughout his first time period. Mr. Dans stated he had come to discover funding alternatives and join with entrepreneurs.
Mr. Dans stated Greenland’s minerals scene was “very thrilling.” However he cautioned, “There’s no fast buck.”
