In this aerial view, melting icebergs collect in the Ilulissat Ice Fjord on July 16, 2024 near Ilulissat, Greenland.
Sean Gallup | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Significant ice loss from Greenland exposes the island's natural resources, inadvertently leaving some of the world's largest natural resources untapped. Critical mineral reserves More easy.
Greenland, a vast but sparsely populated island located between the Arctic Ocean and the North Atlantic Ocean, has been transformed by climate change. Climate crisis In recent decades.
Major analysis of historical satellite images, published Last year, researchers at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom showed that the autonomous Danish territories were turning increasingly green due to… Human-caused global warming.
The changing environment has seen parts of Greenland's ice sheet and glaciers replaced by wetlands and areas of barren shrubs and rocks.
Scientists have repeatedly Sound the alarm Above the melting of snow and ice on the island, warning of the increasing risk of glacier loss Greenhouse gas emissions and Rising sea levels.
For mining companies, the decline of ice in Greenland may facilitate the start of a mineral “gold rush.”
Landscape, on the Drygalski Peninsula, with icebergs in the Umanak Fjord system in northwest Greenland, north of the Arctic Circle.
Reda | Global Photo Collection | Getty Images
“What's happening now is interesting because the waters around Greenland are opening up earlier and earlier every year and closing later and later every year. And being able to get to these remote places is much easier than it was 20 or 30 years ago.” “40 or 70 years ago,” Roderick McCleary, CEO of UK-based mining company 80 Mile, told CNBC via video call.
He added: “Now, ice is likely to only actually form for three or four months in northern latitudes, and the rest of the country is seeing the ice caps recede, exposing rocks and potential mineral deposits that have never been seen before.”
80 Mile currently has three projects it is actively developing in Greenland, including a large oil concession on the island's east coast, a titanium project near the US Petovik spaceport in the northwest and the Disko-Nuussuaq project in the southwest.
Emphasizing the island's strategic potential as a globally important mining centre, McElree said the company's Disco project could be one of the largest nickel and copper projects 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 ice on the island had provided the mining company with a “huge favor” from a logistical point of view.
The company has been able to bring large vessels directly from the North Atlantic “up to the edge of our ore body” at Tanbriz in southern Greenland, Sage said, adding that creating the 80-metre-deep fjords meant the team was able to do this. Utilize 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.
Strange Andersen | AFP | Getty Images
“You can imagine it's easier now to do these things. If you go to Russia, for example, in Siberia, they're under a lot of permafrost and ice and they're still able to extract a lot of minerals, as well as oil and gas,” Sage told CNBC. Via video call: “So, yes, there will be a mini gold rush to Greenland.”
Combined with Greenland's harsh climate, remote landscape and small population, Sage highlighted the lack of infrastructure as an obstacle for mining companies to overcome.
“It's just logistics. The Danes never built a railway and they never built any roads,” Sage said.
“Once you're outside these small towns and cities, there are no roads. So, if you want to go between Qaqortoq, for example, where we are, to Nuuk, you have to take a helicopter. So, that's the problem you're going to have with Gold rush.
Greenland, which has long presented itself as a Western alternative to China Near monopoly On rare earth elements, it was pushed to The center of the geopolitical storm In recent weeks.
US President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to control the region, describing this possibility as “Absolute necessity“For national security purposes.
Speaking at a news conference earlier this month, Trump refused to rule out the possibility of using military force to make Greenland part of the United States.
Prime Minister of Greenland Kutum Egedy He said She said on Monday that the island was open to closer ties with the United States, especially in areas such as mining. Egedi has previously insisted that Greenland is “Not for saleHe called on the international community to respect the island's aspirations for independence.
Early stages
2023, said Jacob Klöfé Kaeding, senior advisor at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS). reconnaissance Of Greenland's resource potential a total of 38 raw materials have been assessed on the island, the vast majority of which have relatively high or moderate potential.
These materials include the rare earth minerals graphite, niobium, platinum group metals, molybdenum, tantalum and titanium. Greenland is also known to have large deposits of lithium, hafnium, uranium and gold.
Critical minerals refer to a subset of materials that are essential for energy transfer. The end use of these materials, which tend to have a high risk of supply chain disruption, is wide-ranging and includes… Electric vehicle Batteries, energy storage technologies, and national security applications.
A woman looks on from a tourist boat as it sails away from a glacier between Manitsoq and Sisimiut, the west coast of Greenland on September 4, 2024.
James Brooks | AFP | Getty Images
“There's huge potential (in Greenland), but right now, there's not a lot of mining going on,” Keding told CNBC by phone.
“Greenland is what we would call a greenfield exploration area. So, (it's) in the early stages of exploration, where we don't have a lot of data for many of the deposits. But there are some large, well-established deposits with known resources.”
Keding struck a note of caution when asked about the potential for a metallic gold rush, saying that while the retreat of Greenland's ice may remove some logistical hurdles, progress on extraction is likely to take “some time.”
