“Hello, Greenland!” Donald Trump’s two-word post on Truth Social sounded innocuous, almost cheery. But the greeting was accompanied by a mocked-up photo of the president’s much-enlarged face looming ominously over the Greenlandic town of Tasiilaq.
It wasn’t immediately clear why the mercurial Trump had suddenly resuscitated his perennial desire to annex Denmark’s Arctic territory.
The issue had lain largely dormant since January, when it caused a bitter trans-Atlantic rift in the run-up to the World Economic Forum in Davos.
He may have been triggered the day before, during his July 31 appearance on Real America’s Voice, a Right-wing television channel.
His interviewer, Steve Gruber, ventured a prediction that Greenland would come under US operational control by the end of Trump’s presidential term in 2028.
“You’ll be right,” Trump responded. “You should make that bet, actually.”
The US president has made no secret of his desire to seize the Danish territory
But that wasn’t all. The day before that interview, something else went down in the vicinity of Tasiilaq itself.
The story, involving a pair of oil companies based in London and Texas, sounds unexceptional. On the surface, it looks like a misunderstanding between enthusiastic drillers and box-ticking bureaucrats.
But in the explosive atmosphere of Trump’s designs on Greenland, many saw a tripwire that could reignite his acquisitive ambitions.
And it’s a story that also raises a more far-reaching question: is Greenland really the El Dorado of oil and minerals that Trump seems to imagine?
A trillion-dollar oil field
One company that does see black gold in the permafrost is London-listed 80 Mile. Its subsidiary, White Flame Energy, holds the only permits to explore the territory’s onshore Jameson Land basin.
The bet is that this isolated expanse, about 500 miles further up the east coast from Tasiilaq, may be a kind of geological mirror of the British-Norwegian oil bounty under the North Sea.
If so, Jameson could yield more than 13 billion barrels of oil. At today’s Brent prices, that’s a payload of more than $1tn (£800bn).
80 Mile has struck a deal with Texas-based Greenland Energy, which will fund the exploratory drilling in exchange for acquiring interests in the Jameson Land prospects.
Recently Greenland Energy, which has several board members seemingly plugged into Trump’s personal and business circles, shifted some kit closer to Jameson Land.
This all seemed routine. But on July 30, the Greenland government issued a statement saying it had just become aware of the move and it wasn’t happy.
The company and its partners did not have the proper permit to move the equipment, the government said. It issued “a strong warning” that every major logistical step needed explicit approval from the Mineral Resources Authority.
Greenland’s officials might just be sticklers for process. But it was hard not to see this as a quiet act of political defiance against Trump.
Testing Trump’s temper
Jeff Landry, Mr Trump’s Greenland envoy, had waxed lyrical in May about the prospect that Western oil firms could be pumping oil there “within 10 months or so”.
He seemed to share the vision of Greenland as a kind of Arctic petrostate, a polar Saudi Arabia, shipping oil to a thirsty world through its thawing northern waters.
“Greenland could be exporting two million barrels of oil a day right now,” Landry said in May. “Think about what that would mean. Think about what kind of pressure that would relieve in the Strait of Hormuz.”
But the reality could now be very different. The Greenlandic authorities say that White Flame Energy – the 80 Mile subsidiary that formally holds the exploration permits – is only at step one of an 11-stage approval process.
Greenland Energy may now have to wait until the winter of 2027 to get started on drilling the first well.
And that’s just to work out how much oil is out there. Extraction would be yet further down the track.
“This pushback is a bit of a reality check for Greenland Energy. I think they maybe thought they could come in and just drill on their own timeline,” says Lewis Lawrence, of the energy analysis firm Wood Mackenzie.
But Greenland’s government is playing with fire.
Its officials may simply be following procedure, which includes environmental impact statements and community consultations.
But they also risk frustrating Trump, rekindling his impatience to bring the resource-rich and strategically located territory under Washington’s aegis.
“There’s a lot of risk, for both sides, that this could escalate or aggravate the Trump administration,” says a mining consultant who has worked on projects in Greenland.
‘Sealskin diplomacy’
The companies appear keen to prevent this. Both 80 Mile and Greenland Energy have vowed to follow the letter of the law.
“Greenland Energy remains committed to advancing its oil exploration programme responsibly and in accordance with Greenland’s regulatory process, and in full compliance with Greenlandic authorities,” the company’s boss, Robert Price, said in a statement this month.
“Operating in the Arctic requires patience, flexibility and a long-term perspective.”
Greenland Energy’s constructive approach to Greenland has now taken a novel turn. Larry Swets Jr, the chairman, has written a 36-page memo arguing that the US should open the door to imports of Greenland’s seal skins.
His white paper, titled “Sealskin Diplomacy” and addressed to Trump’s office and the state department, sets out how Washington could overturn a 54-year-old ban on Inuit-made seal pelts.
Swets calls it “a measure Greenlanders themselves identify as a benefit, that costs almost nothing, that does not touch the constitutional question [of sovereignty], and that can be delivered with Danish cooperation rather than Danish permission”.
But even if Greenland can be wooed diplomatically, the country’s oil dowry may not come within any closer reach.
Dwayne Menezes, founder of the Polar Research and Policy Initiative think tank, says red tape is unavoidable in Greenland.
“Greenland likes to say, ‘We are open for business’. But when they say they are less bureaucratic, in their minds they’re comparing themselves with the rest of the Nordic region,” he says.
“Compared with, say, Australia, the US or the UK, they’re tremendously bureaucratic.”
Some experts doubt the mining industry can ever gain a foothold in Greenland’s remote and unforgiving landscape – Christine Zenino
The other unavoidable part of drilling or mining in Greenland is the cost.
“This has got to be one of the most remote drilling locations in the world. The wells that Greenland Energy wants to drill are relatively simple, but most of the costs are going to be shipping everything across,” says Wood Mackenzie’s Lawrence.
“There’s no local infrastructure. There’s not a shop down the road, if you forget something. You’ve got to take double of everything, back-ups. If you forget a nut or a bolt, then you’re screwed.”
But some doubt a viable mining industry can get going there. One industry expert cites the weather, the cost of materials, the cost of labour, the port and shipping logistics, the transport headaches.
“Greenland will host the Olympic Summer Games before there will be commercial open-pit mining,” he says.
Menezes reckons Greenland still has a shot at becoming an energy and mining powerhouse, if the territory wants it – and if investors and prospectors stick around.
“Greenland will have to eventually become a new Saudi Arabia of some sort, because it really is incredibly resource-rich,” he says.
“To unlock the opportunity, what you do need is patient capital, where you build the infrastructure first. It’s going to take a long time.”
80 Mile and Greenland Energy say they are prepared to be patient. The question is whether Trump is, too.