Greenland’s minerals: Harsh reality lies behind the glittering promise

NUUK, Greenland – More than a decade ago, Canadian miners prospecting for diamonds in western Greenland saw on the horizon a huge white hump.

They called it White Mountain and soon discovered it was a deposit of anorthosite, a salt-and-pepper colour mineral used in paints, glass fibres, flame retardants and other industries. The same mineral creates a ghostly glow on the moon’s surface.

The White Mountain deposit proved to be several miles long and several miles wide, and “only God knows how deep it goes”, said Mr Bent Olsvig Jensen, managing director of Lumina Sustainable Materials, the company mining the area.

Lumina is backed by European and Canadian investors, but Mr Jensen said it was not easy to turn the deposit into a mountain of cash.

“You cannot do exploration all year round; you are in the Arctic,” he explained.

He told of fierce winds grounding helicopters and knocking out communications, pack ice blocking ships and temperatures dropping to such a dreadful low – sometimes minus 40 deg C – that the hydraulic fluid powering the company’s digging machines “becomes like butter”.

Sitting in Lumina’s humble offices in Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, with wet snowflakes falling outside the windows, Mr Jensen brought a dose of sobriety to all the talk of Greenland as the land of incalculable mineral riches.

He noted that though the island has dozens of exploratory projects, there are only two active mines – his and a small gold operation.

The gigantic semi-autonomous island in the Arctic has seized the world’s attention after

US President Donald Trump insisted in January that the United States take it over

. Part of the attraction is its rare earths minerals that are vital to high-tech industries and a source of competition across the world.

China dominates in the world’s critical minerals and has severely restricted the export of certain minerals to the US.

The Trump administration, determined to secure mineral assets overseas, has turned to high-pressure tactics. The natural resources agreement that Ukraine was all set to sign with the administration until the talks spectacularly blew up on Feb 28 was focused on critical minerals.

The European Union is just as fixated. It recently signed a strategic minerals deal with Rwanda, which is suspected of fomenting instability in mineral-rich Congo next door.

It should be no surprise that Mr Trump and his allies are excited about Greenland’s mineral scene. US Vice-President J.D. Vance has spoken of Greenland’s “incredible natural resources”, and Republican senators recently held a hearing on “Greenland’s Geostrategic Importance”, highlighting its rare earths.

Tech chiefs such as Mr Bill Gates and Mr Jeff Bezos, along with some of Mr Trump’s allies, including Mr Howard Lutnick, his commerce secretary, have invested in companies prospecting here.

According to a recent Danish study, 31 of 34 materials defined as critical by the EU, like lithium and titanium, are found on the island.

But for every square on the periodic table that Greenland can fill, there is an even longer list of challenges.

Besides the extreme weather, the island has fewer than 160km of roads, only 56,000 residents – which means a tiny labour pool – and a few small ports.

Equally daunting for miners is Greenland’s environmentalist lobby. Many Greenlanders say they need more mining to become economically and politically independent of Denmark, which keeps it afloat with hundreds of millions of dollars in annual subsidies.

But Greenlanders have also expressed caution about any new heavy industry. They are protective of their environment, which is being shaken up by climate change. The Arctic is warming nearly four times as fast as the rest of the world, which will most likely make the mineral resources more accessible.

The island’s governing political party swept into office four years ago on an environmentalist platform and shut down one of the most promising mining projects. The next elections are on March 11 and, along with independence from Denmark and closer relations with the US, safeguarding the environment is at the top of the agenda.

For many Greenlanders, nature is a part of their identity and something they connect to through fishing, hunting, hiking and spending time outdoors.

“We have lived with nature for as long as we have been here, in sustainable ways,” said Ms Ellen Kristensen, an environmentalist in southern Greenland.

Not far from her community is a small gold mine.

Amaroq Minerals, which is backed by Icelandic, Canadian and other Western investors, extracted its first gold in November. Its chief executive, Mr Eldur Olafsson, says the remoteness of his mine means the company has to be self-sufficient in energy, supplies and transportation – just about everything.

“Operating in Greenland is unlike anything else,” he said.

The Danes, who have controlled Greenland for more than 300 years, have had mixed success. Danish engineers discovered a huge supply of cryolite in the late 18th century.

Cryolite used to be a component of aluminum production, and Danish operators mined it until the 1980s, when synthetic alternatives became widely available.

The Danes made billions, and many Greenlanders say they were exploited.

The same complaints have been lodged against a large coal mine that Denmark developed last century, though it closed in the 1970s.

Greenland is littered with shuttered projects and abandoned sites. A ruby mine near the east coast closed in 2022 amid soaring debts. Around the same time, Greenland’s government formally abandoned its oil ambitions, citing the lack of commercial viability and the unacceptable environmental risks.

Even the search for diamonds has yet to lead to a commercially viable mine.

These days, much of the interest lies in rare earths, but a big rare earth mine in southern Greenland remains a cautionary tale.

Energy Transition Minerals, an Australian mining enterprise with a sizeable investment from a Chinese company, claims its site in Greenland has one of the world’s largest deposits of rare earth oxides.

The company spent more than US$100 million (S$133 million) developing it, only to have Greenland’s governing party, Inuit Ataqatigiit, which had campaigned on killing the project, do exactly that.

Part of the reason Mr Trump is so covetous of Greenland is he wants to box out China. He said that China has “boats all over the place”.

One Greenlander working to help Mr Trump is Mr Jorgen Boassen, a bricklayer who says he has followed American politics since he was a teenager and was instantly drawn to Mr Trump. Mr Boassen campaigned door to door for him in the US last election and was invited to inauguration activities.

Mr Trump, Mr Boassen says, is “a man worth betting on”. NYTIMES