US President Donald Trump has said large-scale oil, gas and mineral exploration is preparing to begin in Greenland, an island he referred to as “our new and beautiful Greenland”. The announcement has come three weeks after Washington signed a security pact covering the Arctic territory.
Writing on his Truth Social platform on October 14, Trump said experts believed the amount of easily available oil there was far greater than almost anywhere else in the world. He gave no detail of the companies involved or of any American stake.
He also described the island as “second to none” for the defence of both the United States and Europe. Any future attack on American soil would have to cross Greenland, where US forces would shoot down drones and missiles, he said.
Greenland remains a self-governing territory of Denmark, a European Union member state, and its residents hold EU citizenship. It left the European Communities in 1985 and is now an overseas country and territory associated with the bloc.
Licensing of the subsoil rests with Greenland’s government rather than with Washington. In 2021 it stopped issuing new oil and gas exploration permits, citing the cost of extraction and the risk to fisheries, tourism and the environment.
In August that government issued a formal warning to a US company with links to Trump after drilling equipment was landed on the east coast without approval. The partners behind the Jameson Land project have since put back their drilling plans to the winter of 2027.
The security agreement was signed on September 22 at the United Nations General Assembly in New York by Trump, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland’s Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen. The 10-page accord amends a 1951 defence treaty and clears the way for two American defence areas at Narsarsuaq in the south and Mestersvig in the northeast, alongside an expanded Pituffik Space Base.
It stopped short of Trump’s earlier demand that the United States take the territory outright, which he had argued was essential for national security. He has since said the deal handed Washington permanent control of Greenland’s security.
The European Commission has answered the American advance with money rather than hardware. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a €200 million partnership package in Nuuk on September 7, covering connectivity, energy, critical raw materials, education and fisheries.
Greenland is the largest recipient of EU support per head among the bloc’s overseas countries and territories and already draws €225 million from the EU budget for 2021-2027. Denmark sent conscripts to the island for the first time in August, and 11 NATO countries held exercises there the following month.
