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In this photo taken from the height of melting icebergs, Ilulissat ice fjord crowds on July 16, 2024. near Ilulissat, Greenland.
Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images
The massive loss of ice from Greenland is exposing the island’s natural resources, inadvertently leaving some of the world’s largest untapped critical mineral reserves more accessible.
Greenland, a huge but sparsely populated island located between the Arctic Ocean and the North Atlantic Ocean, was transformed by climate crisis in recent decades.
A large analysis of historical satellite images, published Last year, researchers from the UK’s University of Leeds revealed that the autonomous Danish territory is becoming greener due to human-caused global warming.
The changing environment has resulted in parts of Greenland’s ice sheet and glaciers being replaced by swamps, scrub and barren rocks.
Scientists repeatedly killed the alarm over melting snow and ice on the island, warning of increased risk of ice mass loss greenhouse gas emissions and sea level rise.
For mining companies, the retreat of Greenland’s ice could help usher in a mineral gold rush.
Landscape, on the Drygal Peninsula, with icebergs in the Uummanak fjord system in northwest Greenland, north of the Arctic Circle.
Reda | Universal Images Group | Getty Images
“What’s happening now is interesting because the waters around Greenland are opening earlier and earlier every year and closing later and later. And the ability to get to these far places is much easier than it was 20, 30, 40 or 70 years ago. therefore,” Roderick McIlry, chief executive of British miner 80 Mile, told CNBC via video call.
“Now, ice probably only really forms for three to four months in the northernmost latitudes, while the rest of the country is seeing ice caps retreat, exposing rock and potential mineral deposits that weren’t there before,” he added.
80 Mile currently has three projects under active development in Greenland, including a major oil concession on the island’s east coast, a titanium project near the US Pitufik Space Base in the northwest and the Disko-Nuussuaq project in the southwest.
Underscoring the island’s strategic potential as a globally significant mining hub, McIlree said the Disko firm’s project could be one of the largest nickel and copper mines on the planet.
Geopolitical storm
Tony Sage, CEO of Critical Metals Corporation, which is developing one of the world’s largest rare earth assets in Greenland, said the melting of the island’s ice has benefited the mining company “enormously” logistically.
Sage said the company had been able to bring large ships directly from the North Atlantic “right to the edge of our ore body” at Tunbreeze in southern Greenland, adding that creating 80m-deep fjords meant the team was able to use a floating dock rather than a port.
A tourist boat maneuvers among floating icebergs in Disko Bay, Ilulissat, west Greenland, on June 30, 2022.
Amazing Anderson | Afp | Getty Images
“You can imagine it’s easier to do these things now. If you go to Russia, like Siberia, there’s a lot of permafrost and ice, and they still manage to get a lot of minerals and oil and gas. So, yes, there’s going to be a mini gold rush in Greenland,” he said. Sage to CNBC via video call.
Along with Greenland’s harsh climate, remote landscape and small population, Sage highlighted the lack of infrastructure as a barrier that mining companies must overcome.
“It’s just logistics. The Danes never built railroads (and) never built any roads,” Sage said.
“Once you get outside of these small towns and cities, there are no roads. So if you want to go between, say, Kokortak, where we are, and Nuuk, you have to take a helicopter. that’s the problem you’re going to face with a gold rush,” he added.
Greenland, which has long been a Western alternative to China near monopoly on rare earth elements, was pushed into the center of a geopolitical storm in recent weeks.
US President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to gain control of the territory, describing the prospect as “an 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 part of the US
Prime Minister of Greenland Mute Egede said Monday that the island is open to closer ties with the US, especially in areas such as mining. Egede previously insisted that Greenland “not for sale“and called on the international community to respect the island’s desire for independence.
Early stages
Jakob Kløve Keiding, senior consultant at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), said that in 2023 survey of Greenland’s resource potential assessed a total of 38 types of raw materials on the island, the vast majority of which have 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.
Important minerals belong to a subgroup of materials that are considered important for the transition of energy. The end uses of these materials, which generally have a high risk of supply chain disruption, are extensive and include electric car batteries, energy storage technologies and national security programs.
A woman looks on from a tourist boat sailing away from a glacier between Manitsok and Sissimhut, on the west coast of Greenland, on September 4, 2024.
James Brooks | Afp | Getty Images
“There’s huge potential (in Greenland), but there’s not really a lot of production there at the moment,” Kaeding told CNBC by phone.
“Greenland is what we would call a new exploration area. So (it’s) in the early stages of exploration where we don’t have a lot of data on many fields. But there are some large and well-known fields with known resources.”
When asked about the prospect of a gold rush, Kaeding sounded a note of caution, saying that while Greenland’s retreating ice could remove some logistical hurdles, mining progress would likely take “quite a while.”
