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Last week, President Donald Trump announced that he had established a framework surrounding a deal over Greenland\u2019s future, one that guarantees the U.S. will be \u201cinvolved\u201d in the island\u2019s mineral rights. But despite easing tensions with NATO countries after months of increasingly hostile rhetoric over ownership of the Denmark-administered territory, Trump\u2019s shrinking pool of friends in Europe could foil his plan to extract the valuable minerals hidden under the ice.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s one of three crucial obstacles the U.S. would likely have to overcome to gain access to Greenland\u2019s resource wealth, according to Wood Mackenzie, an energy and mining research firm. Greenland ranks eighth in the world for rare earth reserves, essential materials to developing advanced electronics, electric cars and high-performance magnets. That wealth has made it a tantalizing target for a U.S. administration eager to diversify supply chains away from China, which is currently the dominant supplier behind several key minerals and controls the lion\u2019s share of global processing capacity.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In a brief published Wednesday, WoodMac analysts outlined the primary limitations of relying on Greenland\u2019s reserve in the U.S.\u2019s bid for rare earth dominance. Here are the three massive hurdles standing in the way of Trump\u2019s Greenland goals:<\/p>\n
Arctic extremes would be a brutal adversary to any large-scale mining operation. Greenland\u2019s vast ice sheet limits exploration to the island\u2019s coastal fringes. But even there, freezing temperatures and minimal winter daylight make industrial operations nearly impossible. Equipment must endure subzero storage, while fuel and workers face remote transport via inadequate ports and nonexistent roads, WoodMac\u2019s analysts wrote. Even if a suitable site is found and manned, deposits lie under ice sheets up to a mile thick.<\/p>\n
Only one port in Greenland, in the southwestern capital of Nuuk, boasts modern infrastructure that could accommodate exports, the analysts added. In the rest of the territory, companies or nations attempting to mine would have to build their own energy grid and transport networks, given the interior\u2019s lack of either, as well as import an entire skilled labor force.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAll these issues can be overcome, but it will take time and money,\u201d the analysts wrote. How much money? WoodMac didn\u2019t specify, but experts previously told Fortune<\/em> <\/em>that the price tag would likely run up to the hundreds of billions of dollars over several decades.<\/p>\n Opposition to mining and resource extraction runs deep in Greenland\u2019s political DNA. In a 2021 election, the leftist Inuit Ataqatigiit party won on a distinctly anti-mining message, specifically opposed to a planned rare earths mine. The party has passed several anti-mining laws, including legislation in 2021 that banned most uranium development. The government has instead prioritized small, sustainable operations.\u00a0<\/p>\n In last year\u2019s election, Inuit Ataqatigiit lost seats to a pro-development opposition, but Greenland\u2019s mineral resources minister,\u00a0Naaja Nathanielsen, remains affiliated with the leftist party. In an interview with Politico <\/em>this week, she rejected U.S. threats and vowed to keep control over resources, pledging she and her party were \u201cnot going to accept our future development of our mineral sector to be decided outside Greenland.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear how future U.S.-led extraction would proceed. But under current laws and agreements, WoodMac analysts wrote, \u201cany development will need to meet high standards for environmental and social impact.\u201d<\/p>\n But possibly the most significant barrier Trump faces is the souring relationship that has festered between the U.S. and its European partners. The WoodMac analysts point out that Greenland\u2019s geographic position between the U.S. and Europe suggests rare earth mines on the island would benefit both regions. By sharing financing and risk, they wrote, both the U.S. and the EU could access a more secure supply of rare earths independent from China.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis would require cooperation at a time when the relationship between the U.S. and the EU is under strain,\u201d they added. Trump\u2019s designs on Greenland have been widely criticized by the EU as well as the U.K., both of which recently sent a small number of troops to Greenland\u2014ostensibly for training purposes but it also symbolized their solidarity. Tensions seem to have eased somewhat after Trump\u2019s appearance at Davos last week, where he ruled out military action and walked back EU tariff threats.\u00a0<\/p>\n But transatlantic relations remain at a low point. And should Trump ramp up the bellicosity of his rhetoric once again, Greenland might even be pushed closer to China, the WoodMac analysts warned. While China currently has only a minor stake in Greenland\u2019s mining operations, and the island\u2019s government has stated that it favors partnerships with Western nations, it has also signaled openness to engaging with China if the conditions are right. In an interview with the FT<\/em> last year, Nathanielsen, the minerals minister, criticized dwindling U.S. and EU investment.<\/p>\n \u2018\u2018We do want to partner up with European and American partners. But if they don\u2019t show up I think we need to look elsewhere,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #big #hurdles #Trumps #plan #extract #Greenlands #rare #earths<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week, President Donald Tr… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[237,173,486,8290,1127,11177,3998,5542,8288,4243,3449,154,267,1840,1949,496],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17321"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}2. Environmental and local pushback<\/strong><\/h2>\n
3. Alienating allies<\/strong><\/h2>\n