US President Donald Trump has repeatedly stated that Greenland could be annexed by the United States. The world's largest island appears to be a significant advantage for the White House in the geopolitical struggle with Russia and China for the North Pole. The fate of Greenland, which belongs to the Kingdom of Denmark, a member of the European Union and NATO, is a subject of serious debate.
Modern.az presents the riches of Greenland.
Why is Greenland so important for the US?
Trump, who wants to see the island as the next state of the United States, "justifies" this with the idea of protecting his country's security. However, international experts believe that the main issue here is the island's valuable resources.
Greenland, the largest island on Earth, possesses one of the world's richest natural resource reserves.
These riches include critical raw materials such as lithium and rare earth elements, which are vital for green technologies but whose extraction and sustainability are extremely sensitive, as well as other valuable minerals and metals, and vast hydrocarbon reserves including oil and gas.
Three rare earth element deposits located in the deep layers of Greenland's ice sheet could be among the world's largest in terms of volume. These reserves hold great potential for the production of batteries and electrical components, which are crucial for the global energy transition.
The scale of Greenland's hydrocarbon potential and mineral wealth has prompted Denmark and the US to investigate the commercial and environmental viability of new activities such as mining. According to the US Geological Survey's assessment, onshore areas in northeastern Greenland (including ice-covered areas) possess approximately 31 billion barrels of oil equivalent in hydrocarbon reserves. This figure is close to the total proven crude oil reserves of the United States.
It should be noted that although Greenland's ice-free areas are approximately twice the size of Great Britain, they constitute only one-fifth of the island's total surface. This increases the likelihood of vast undiscovered natural resources existing beneath the ice sheet.
Greenland's rich natural resources are directly linked to its extremely complex geological history, formed over the last 4 billion years. Here, one can find some of the Earth's oldest rocks, as well as truck-sized natural iron masses not of meteoritic origin. Although kimberlite pipes containing diamonds were discovered in the 1970s, these deposits have not yet been exploited due to the challenging climate and logistics.
Onshore sedimentary basins in Greenland, such as the Jameson Land basin, are believed to hold large oil and gas reserves, similar to Norway's hydrocarbon-rich continental shelf. However, high costs have limited commercial exploration. Furthermore, recent studies indicate the potential existence of large-scale offshore oil and gas systems along all of Greenland's coasts.
Metals such as lead, copper, iron, and zinc are also primarily present in ice-free onshore sedimentary basins and have been extracted locally since 1780.
Hard-to-obtain rare earth elements
Although Greenland does not possess volcanic activity as strong as Iceland's, many critical raw material reserves on the island are linked to its volcanic history.
Rare earth elements such as niobium, tantalum, and ytterbium have been discovered in magmatic rock layers.
It should be particularly emphasized that Greenland's sub-ice reserves of dysprosium and neodymium are projected to meet more than a quarter of future global demand. The total volume of these reserves is estimated at approximately 40 million tons.
These elements are indispensable for wind energy, electric vehicle motors, and high-temperature magnets (including those in nuclear reactors), and are considered the most strategic, yet most difficult to obtain, rare earth elements.
The development of known deposits such as Kvanefjeld in Southern Greenland, as well as undiscovered reserves in the central mountainous part of the island, could significantly impact the global rare earth elements market, as these resources are extremely limited worldwide.
