WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that “massive” oil, gas and mineral exploration is “getting ready to begin” in Greenland, and named no company, no licence and no start date.
“Massive Oil, Gas, and Mineral Exploration is getting ready to begin in our new and beautiful Greenland,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. He added that experts say the amount of easily available oil there is far greater than in almost any land in the world, CBS News reported. The report carries no reaction from Denmark or Greenland.
The possessive is the story. Greenland is not American. What the United States has is a security agreement signed on September 22 in New York by Trump, Denmark and Greenland, which gives it broad access to the island’s airspace and territory and, in CBS’s account, focuses mainly on military use. It stopped short of Trump’s stated goal of taking the territory, Euronews noted.
The deal lets the United States expand Pituffik Space Base and set up new defense areas at Narsarsuaq and Mestersvig, with no expiration date. On resources it says little: it mentions “minerals cooperation” and gives no specifics, CBS News reported. When Trump first announced it, Eastern Herald reported that the text had not been published and that his description of “permanent control” might not match what Denmark agreed to.
The rest of the post was about defense. Any future attack on the United States, Trump wrote, would have to come across Greenland, where American defenses would “routinely knock down drones, missiles, or any other form of weapon not yet conceived.” Greenland “gives us time, location, and sightline, like nowhere else in the World,” he said. Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, had said of the September deal that it “strengthens our common security in the Arctic and the North Atlantic Area,” and Greenland’s prime minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, called it “to the benefit of us all,” Euronews reported.
The resource claim is harder to test. Some industry experts say Greenland’s minerals are lightly explored and that extraction costs have not made economic sense for private companies, according to CBS. In August, media reports described preparatory work by a US oil company in a remote part of eastern Greenland, which left locals and authorities uneasy, Euronews said; neither outlet names the company.
Who would explore, under what Greenlandic licence, is what the post leaves out.
