From white gold to the new oil – why Greenland’s mineral wealth is in the spotlight

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen is set to visit Greenland on Wednesday as diplomatic relations between Washington and Denmark plumb new depths following vocal US signalling of its desire to take control of the self-governing territory of Greenland. But while president Trump continues to insist it is a matter of national security, he has made no secret of his interest in the vast Arctic island’s natural resources.

It may not be, as it appears on the standard Mercator projection map of the world, as big as Africa – but Greenland is in its own way becoming the object of a scramble for resources by covetous world powers, as Africa did at the end of nineteenth century.

The world’s largest island is equivalent to half the land area of the entire EU. And at 2.17m square kilometres, it is 25% larger than Alaska – which is itself by far the largest state of the US and currently the country’s only foothold in the Arctic region.

And it is rich. Not in the developed way of nearby regional petroleum superpower Norway, but in its potential reserves of raw materials dubbed ‘critical’ by Brussels – from staples like copper and cryolite to cobalt, lithium and a plethora of rare earth metals increasingly in demand for green energy and digital technologies. These have been called, not without reason, the ‘new oil’.

At a rather inconvenient time for the Danish government, this year saw the release of a documentary film that claims Danish mining companies extracted the equivalent of tens of billions of euros worth of cryolite on Greenland’s west coast over 130 years, allegedly without putting much back into the local economy.

The area around the mine in question in Ivigtût (now Ivittuut) on the southern tip of Greenland, is being actively