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In this aerial view, melting icebergs crowd the Ilulissat Ice Fjord on July 16, 2024 near Ilulissat, Greenland.
Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The massive loss of ice from Greenland exposes the island’s natural resources, inadvertently making some of the world’s largest unexplored. critical mineral reserves more accessible.
Greenland, a vast but sparsely populated island located between the Arctic and North Atlantic Oceans, has been transformed by the climate crisis in recent decades.
A major analysis of historical satellite images, published Last year by researchers from the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, it was shown that the Danish autonomous territory has become increasingly green due to Global warming caused by humans.
The changing environment has seen parts of the Greenland ice sheet and glaciers replaced by wetlands, scrubland and barren rock.
Scientists have repeatedly the alarm sounded over the melting snow and ice on the island, warning that the risks of ice mass loss are increasing greenhouse gas emissions and sea level rise.
For mining companies, Greenland’s ice retreat could facilitate the start of a mineral “gold rush.”
Landscape, on the Drygalski Peninsula, with icebergs in the Uummannaq Fjord System in northwest Greenland, north of the Arctic Circle.
Red | Universal Image Group | Getty Images
“What is happening now is interesting because the waters around Greenland are opening earlier and earlier each year and closing later each year. And the ability to enter these far places is much easier than it was 20, 30 . 40 or 70 years ago,” Roderick McIllree, chief executive of British mining company 80 Mile, told CNBC via video call.
“Now, ice probably only really forms for three or four months in the very northern latitudes and the rest of the country sees retreating ice sheets that expose rocks and potential mineral deposits that haven’t been seen before,” he added.
80 Mile currently has three projects it is actively developing in Greenland, including a large oil concession on the east coast of the island, a titanium project near the US Pituffik space base in the northwest and its Disko-Nuussuaq project in the southwest.
Underscoring the island’s strategic potential as a significant global mining center, McIllree said the company’s Disko project could be one of the largest nickel and copper deposits on the planet.
A geopolitical storm
Tony Sage, CEO of Critical Metals Corporation, which is developing one of the largest rare earth assets in Greenland, said the melting of the ice on the island had done the mining company “enormous favors” from one point of view logistic
Sage said the company was able to bring large vessels directly from the North Atlantic “to the edge of our ore body” at Tanbreez in southern Greenland, adding that the creation of 80-metre-deep fjords meant that the team was able to use a floating dock instead of a port.
A boat carrying tourists maneuvers between floating icebergs in Disko Bay, Ilulissat, West Greenland, on June 30, 2022.
Odd Andersen | Afp | Getty Images
“You can imagine, it is easier now to do these things. If you go to Russia, for example, in Siberia, it is under a lot of permafrost and ice and they still manage to mine a lot of minerals, as well as oil and gas. So, yes, there will be a mini gold rush in Greenland,” Sage told CNBC via video call.
Alongside Greenland’s harsh climate, remote landscape and small population, Sage highlighted the lack of infrastructure as a barrier for mining companies to overcome.
“It’s just logistics. The Danes have never built a railway [and] he didn’t build roads,” Sage said.
“Once you are outside these towns and cities, there are no roads. So, if you want to go in between, for example, Qaqortoq, where we are, to Nuuk, you have to take a helicopter. that is the problem you will have with a race to gold,” he added.
Greenland, which has long presented itself as a Western alternative to China near monopoly on rare earth elements, it was pushed into the center of a geopolitical storm in the last few weeks.
US President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to gain control of the territory, describing the prospect as “absolute necessity“for purposes related to national security.
Speaking at a press conference earlier this month, Trump refused to rule out the possibility of using military force to make Greenland a part of the United States.
The Prime Minister of Greenland Mute Egede he said Monday that the island is open to closer ties with the United States, especially in areas such as mining. Egede previously insisted that Greenland is “not for sale” and asked the international community to respect the island’s aspirations for independence.
The first stages
Jakob Kløve Keiding, senior consultant at the Geological Council of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), said a 2023. survey of Greenland’s resource potential assessed a total of 38 raw materials on the island, most of which have a relatively high or moderate potential.
These materials include the rare earth metals graphite, niobium, platinum group metals, molybdenum, tantalum and titanium. Greenland is also known to have significant deposits of lithium, hafnium, uranium and gold.
Critical minerals refer to a subset of materials considered essential for the energy transition. The end use of these materials, which tend to have a high risk of supply chain disruption, is broad and includes electric vehicle batteries, energy storage technology and national security applications.
A woman looks on from a tourist boat as she sails past a glacier between Maniitsoq and Sisimiut, on the west coast of Greenland on September 4, 2024.
James Brooks | Afp | Getty Images
“There is huge potential [in Greenland] but, at the moment, there’s not really a lot of mining going on,” Keiding told CNBC by phone.
“Greenland is what we would call a greenfield exploration area. So, [it is] in the early stages of exploration where, for many of the deposits, we do not have much data. But there are some large and well-established deposits with known resources.”
Keiding sounded a note of caution when asked about the prospect of a mineral gold rush, saying that while Greenland’s retreating ice could remove some logistical obstacles, progress on extraction would likely take “a good time”.
