Greenland’s melting ice is clearing the way for the mining ‘gold rush’

Massive ice loss from Greenland is exposing the island’s natural resources, inadvertently making the world’s largest untouched critical mineral deposits more accessible.

Greenland, a vast but sparsely populated island located between the Arctic and North Atlantic oceans, has been transformed by the climate crisis of recent decades.

Core analysis of historical satellite images; Published Last year, researchers at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom pointed out that the independent state of Denmark is turning increasingly green. Human-caused global warming.

The changed environment has partially replaced the Greenland ice sheet and glaciers with wetlands, scrub and barren rocks.

Scientists have repeated it He sounded the alarm Warning of the loss of glaciers on the ice and snow on the island Greenhouse gas emissions and sea level rise.

For mining companies, the Greenland ice sheet may facilitate the start of a mining “gold rush”.

“What’s happening now is interesting because the waters around Greenland are opening earlier and earlier each year and closing later and later each year. And the ability to get into these remote places is much easier than it was 20, 30. 40 or 70 years ago,” said the UK. Roderick McKiely, CEO of 80 Mile Mining Company, told CNBC in a video call.

“Now the ice only forms in northern latitudes for maybe three or four months, while the rest of the country is seeing ice caps that expose never-before-seen rocks and potential mineral deposits,” he said.

80 Mile currently has three projects in the works in Greenland, including a major oil deal on the island’s east coast, a titanium project near the US Pitufic space station in the northwest, and the Disko-Nususuk project in the southwest.

Explaining the island’s strategic potential as a globally significant mining hub, McCleary said the company’s Disco project is the largest nickel and copper occurrence on the planet. He said it could be one of those events.

Tony Sage, CEO of Critical Metals Corp., which is developing one of the world’s largest rare earth properties in Greenland, said melting ice on the island had done the mining company “huge favors” in terms of logistics.

Sage said the company was able to bring large ships directly from the North Atlantic Ocean in southern Greenland’s Tanbreeze, and said the team was able to create fjords 80 meters deep. Use a floating dock instead of a dock.

“You can imagine, it’s easy to do these things now. If you go to Russia, for example, in Siberia, it’s under a lot of permafrost and glaciers and they’re still able to produce a lot of minerals, as well as oil and gas. So, yes, there will be a bit of a gold rush to Greenland. ,” Sage told CNBC in a video call.

Along with Greenland’s harsh climate, remote landscape and small population, Sage notes that the lack of infrastructure is an obstacle for mining companies to overcome.

“It’s just logistics. The Danes didn’t build a railway (and) they didn’t build any roads,” Sage said.

“Once you’re outside of these small towns and cities, there are no roads. So, if you want to get between us, for example, Qaqortoq, where we are, to Nuk, you have to take a helicopter. So, that’s what you’ll have in the gold rush,” he added.

Greenland, which has long positioned itself as a Western alternative to China A near monopoly on rare earth elements, it has been thrust into the center of a geopolitical storm in recent weeks.

While US President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly expressed his desire to take control of the country, he has described his hopes as “Absolute necessity“In relation 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 he said. On Monday, the island is open to rapprochement with the US, especially in areas such as mining. Egede has previously insisted that it is Greenland.Not for sale“And they called on the international community to respect the island’s aspirations for independence.

Jacob Klove Keid, senior consultant at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS), said in 2023: survey Greenland Resource Potential has assessed a total of 38 resources on the island, most 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 known to have significant deposits of lithium, hafnium, uranium and gold.

Essential minerals refer to a group of materials that are considered essential for energy transfer. End-uses for these materials, which have a high risk of supply chain disruptions, include electric vehicle batteries, energy storage technologies, and national security applications.

“There’s huge potential in Greenland, but there’s not a lot of mining going on right now,” Kidding told CNBC by phone.

“Greenfield is what we call a greenfield exploration area. Therefore, (it is) in the early stages of the investigation, for many deposits, we do not have that much information. But there are some large and well-established. Deposits with known resources.”

Caid sounded a note of caution when asked about the mining gold rush, saying that while Greenland’s retreating ice could remove some logistical hurdles, progress in extraction “It may take a long time,” he said.