The Journal. - Greenland Has Tons of Minerals. So Where Are All the Miners?

Episode Date: March 20, 2025

Greenland could satisfy the world’s hunger for minerals, if miners could just start digging. WSJ’s Sune Rasmussen explains why Greenland’s minerals remain mostly untapped, and what bringing these rare earths to the surface could mean to the global supply chain. Further Reading: - Greenland Has the Makings of a Mining Boom. So Where Is Everyone?  - Greenlanders Reject Trump’s Overtures at the Ballot Box  Further Listening: - Why Trump Wants Ukrainian Minerals  - Why an Arctic Treasure Is Spurring Hope and Dread  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Before this year, how much time did you spend thinking about Greenland? Being Danish, I've actually always wanted to go to Greenland. That's our colleague Suna Rasmussen. I've tried to convince my editors to go, to send me to Greenland for a couple years, but with very little success. But then all of a sudden... And I also have a message tonight for the incredible people of Greenland. Everyone's talking about Greenland.

Well, we need Greenland for national security purposes. I've been told that for a long time. It can be quite seductive to just listen to the headlines coming from President Trump about seizing control of a foreign country. And I think we're going to get it. One way or the other we're going to get it. But once you start digging a little bit, pun intended, you see that the whole, the issue is so much more complicated as with many other things, right?

Because of President Trump's interest in Greenland, this past February, Suna finally got to live his dream. Well, I've sort of grown up with Greenland as part of my awareness since I was a child. So I just wanted to go because it's a place like no other, right? Now here's my chance. And what was your impression when you finally went? Greenland is a mind-blowing place. It's a huge landmass. It's nearly one-fourth of the territory of the United States.

80% of the island is covered by ice. In some places, the ice sheet is over a mile thick. So you have this country that, in some respects, is completely different from anything you've seen elsewhere in Europe. Just the rawness of the nature, the culture itself, is indigenous, Inuit culture. Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark.

It's the largest island in the world, yet it's home to only 57,000 people. And the small population lives on top of a wealth of minerals, enough minerals to potentially transform the global supply chain. Some mining experts say that Greenland could supply North America and Europe with critical minerals for decades. You know, it sounds like it has all the makings of a gold rush, but at the same time, there's very little actual mining taking place. So what I was hoping to understand was why that is.

Like, why is it so difficult to mine in Greenland? And what's holding people back? Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business and power. I'm Jessica Mendoza. It's Thursday, March 20th. Coming up on the show, Greenland has the makings of a mining boom. So where is everyone? Hey, are you in the mood for something new? Why not fly with Air Transat to an eclectic music scene? A vibrant nightlife? Why not fly with Air Transat to an eclectic music scene?

A vibrant nightlife. And your next big discovery. Starting this summer, you can fly direct from Toronto to Berlin exclusively with Air Transat. Now all things Berlin feel closer than ever. Air Transat, travel moves us. When you get into an Escape Plug-in Hybrid, you get the perfect mix. You can chill in electric mode,

turn it up in gas mode, or get the best of both in hybrid mode. Choose how you move in the all-in-one Escape. And right now, get a $3,000 rebate on the Escape plug-in hybrid and all 2025 Escape models. For details, visit your Toronto area Ford store or ford.ca. Greenland has held the imagination of explorers for centuries. The U.S. started looking into the island's resource potential around the time of the Civil War.

And now, as the world's superpowers scramble for resources, Greenland has again become a coveted frontier. The value of Greenland is twofold. It is especially valuable because of its strategic location. So it's placed right in the Arctic, which in recent years has taken on a sort of increased geopolitical importance as tensions have heated up between the US and Russia, the Western Russia. So that's one reason why it's important for the U.S. But Greenland's also home to extraordinary underground wealth. Greenland is an estimated 43 of the 50 critical minerals the U.S. considers vital to national security, including rare earth minerals, which are used to make everything from microchips

to fighter jets. So whoever controls Greenland's supply could gain an economic and defensive edge. Right now, the country that dominates the global market for rare earths and other minerals is China. Sixty percent of the world's rare earth minerals are mined there. China is also responsible for 90 percent of the world's rare earth refining activity. That's the process that turns those minerals into a more useful form. That makes the West hugely vulnerable to, for example, a trade war.

China can wage its control of these minerals in a trade war against the US, against Europe. So in that sense, the stakes are really high. How much of these minerals does Greenland have? Yeah, that's a good question. We don't actually know. There's a lot of exploration happening in Greenland, but we don't have a lot of data showing sort of exactly what that wealth consists of. To witness Greenland's mining potential for himself, Suna flew to the capital, Nuuk. From there, he took another plane, and then a helicopter,

and finally a taxi. It's so funny to have all of that, like you're traveling over raw terrain, and then it's like, and then we're going to call a taxi. Yeah, there was one taxi waiting for us outside. Because the whole town can see when the helicopter arrives. So I think the local taxi driver just got in his car and went to pick us up. The town Suna traveled so far to see is called Narsak.

Narsak is on the very southern tip of Greenland. It's on the sea. And it's kind of placed at the bottom of a mountain plateau, which is this place called Kvenefjell. And the houses in town painted these bright colors, like bright red, bright green, bright blue, and dotted across the landscape, both sort of at the foot of the mountain. And some of the houses are sort of dotted

up along the ridge of the mountain. So it's very picturesque. Yeah, I was going to say that must be so beautiful against the ice. Suna was sharing the town's only hotel with a group of executives from an Australian mining company called Energy Transition Minerals. The company had been exploring the area since 2007, hoping to eventually build a mine at a site called Kavanofield.

The site sits in the mountains above Narsak and contains an estimated one billion tons of minerals. During his trip, Suna and a photographer embarked on a journey from the town to Kavanofield. Some executives from Energy Transition Minerals set out on the same trek. The two groups quickly ran into some challenges. The entire mountain passes was snowed over and covered in ice.

And the roads were impossible. What the photographer and I did was we found two local Greenlanders who had snowmobiles and who were willing to take us into where the mine is. So we borrowed two like snow suits, onesies, basically thick onesies from a local farmer. These onesies that reeked of sheep. Oh wow. And then got on the back of two snowmobiles and then went in through this pathless gorge into the mountain.

I made it to sort of just below the mine entrance, but the whole thing was snowed over. So we got as close as we could, and we got closer than the company. The company itself couldn't get closer than about six or seven miles. So what did you learn from that mission, besides, you know, how to travel by snowmobile? Well, I think the fact that this company had traveled from, the executives had traveled from Singapore, from Perth, Sydney, and Australia, all the way to this small town in Greenland and still turned around. That to me spoke volumes about just how inaccessible Greenland is.

And this is southern Greenland, remember. This is the most accessible part of the country, because this is the warmest part of the country. And access is only half the challenge. There's also a cumbersome licensing process to deal with, and the local labor pool is small. Transporting materials in and out local labor pool is small. Transporting materials in and out of Greenland is another huge problem. There's no roads connecting settlements in Greenland,

and shipping is treacherous because of all the floating ice off the coast of Greenland. So even if you were to extract minerals from the ground, you still have to put it on a ship and somehow get it off the island, which is tricky in many parts because of all this floating ice. Then there's the politics.

In 2021, the Greenlandic government passed a law banning the mining of minerals that contained a certain amount of the radioactive material uranium. The prime minister who passed this uranium law back in 2021 is from Nassau. So he's like a local. One of the reasons that we have taken the steps to ban uranium mining, because we also

think about our children and grandchildren and their children and the grandchildren after. He actually ran and won the election on a campaign promise. His main campaign promise was this uranium law. He said, I'm going to pass this law so we can protect our local environment. For energy transition minerals, that uranium law threw a massive wrench into their mining plans. And it's essentially impossible to extract these rare earths in Kvannafjeld without also extracting uranium.

So they kind of fell victim to this new law. And since then, the project has essentially been paused. In response, the company filed an arbitration case against the Greenlandic and Danish governments, demanding either the right to mine Kvannafjeld or $11.5 billion in compensation. To put that in perspective, Greenland's entire GDP is around $3 billion. While Energy Transition Minerals wages this legal dispute, it's simultaneously fighting on another front,

in Narsak, with the people who live there. How company executives are trying to win over the locals is next. Sick of dreaming smaller? Sick of investing but not seeing your money grow? Sick of feeling like you're leaving money on the table, paying high fees, and not knowing if you're even making the right investments?

With Questrade, you get the right tools, stock insights, and proper guidance so you can become a better investor. It's time to get the financial future you deserve. Get yours, Questrade. When you let aerotruffle bubbles melt, everything takes on a creamy, delicious, chocolatey glow. Like that pile of laundry. You didn't forget to fold it. No, it's a new trend.

Wrinkled cheek. Feel the aerobubbles melt. It's mind-bubbling. Oga ni nai, ka baga. Upon landing in Narsak, executives from Energy Transition Minerals were confronted by a group of local protesters. They wore brightly colored vests that said,

uranium, no thank you, in Greenlandic. You are not welcome here as long as you don't respect us. As people who is able to make their own decisions according to our knowledge. I spoke to this young 25 year old woman. This is an indigenous people. I mean this is our land. Divorce land, divorce. And her argument was like, well why is it always us,

the indigenous Inuit people who have to suffer for the development of the Western world. This is a very sort of colonialist way of looking at economic development. So there's that argument in Nassau, and that's a very emotional one for an Inuit population who also for decades, for centuries, has lived under the control of Denmark. If the Kvarnafjall mining project moves forward, it would produce a lot of radioactive waste. Energy Transition Minerals has proposed storing 100 million tons of that waste in a mountain

lake, walled off by two dams. Experts have questioned the safety of that proposal, and some locals are very concerned. And these are people in Nassau, remember, who live off the land. They live off berries they pick in the mountains, they live off fishing. So they're very concerned about the environmental impact. They're also concerned about the impact on their traditional way of life. Like a big mining project will completely upend life in this part of Greenland where this largely Inuit population has maintained a certain

way of life for decades, if not centuries, right? Energy Transition Minerals has insisted that the town will be safe. We live in a rapidly changing world, a world that is becoming more environmentally conscious. This is from a promotional video that the company posted online. To ensure minimal impact on the environment, and importantly, the safety and well-being of the community, the Cavenafeld project has been meticulously planned. During Suna's visit, the company hosted a dinner for Narsak locals who were interested in their project. Executives treated them to a dinner of lamb burgers and craft drinks, distilled from herbs picked from the nearby mountains.

They invited these local farmers, landowners, other people with sort of influence in the community. They were then pleading their case and socializing, buttering up the local power brokers. One thing they were trying to do was pitch to a local farmer, the biggest local sheep farmer in Narsak, that he should house hundreds of employees that would be working on this project on his farm. Which he seemed happy to do because he probably stands to make a healthy buck from that.

In its messaging, energy transition minerals has leaned into the economic benefits that mining could bring to Narsak. Ever since the town's fishing factory shuttered a decade ago, the population has struggled with higher than average unemployment rates. If the mine is built, energy transition minerals has promised 400 jobs during the operation. Locals who support the mining project see it as an opportunity to get their economy back on track. Another argument in favor of the mining site taps into the widely popular Greenlandic push for independence from Denmark.

To become self-sufficient, Greenland would need to harness its mineral wealth. Supporters of the Kvarnafjord project see it as a step towards advancing that cause. cause. How serious is the divide between those who are pro-mining and those who are anti? I think it's like the main issue that divides the local community. I spoke to people who have had family members that were on the opposing side of the issue, and they have fallen out to an extent where they barely talk anymore in a town of 1,300

people. So this is something that creates a lot of tension. While the Kovanefield mining project is a big deal for locals, it also has global implications. If they manage to actually mine in this area and start shipping out the minerals, I think that could probably give other companies a bit of confidence that it's possible to mine in Greenland and make a profit. Greenland potentially can be very crucial in the West's quest to build an alternative supply chain outside of China. But although Greenland's minerals would diversify the world's reserve, the western

portion of the supply chain still stops short of a finished product. Remember, China is behind over 90% of the world's rare earth refining activity. Yeah, and that is sort of, I guess, a bit of an irony here is that the US lacks large-scale refining capacity of rare earths. And the US already sends the majority of its rare earth minerals to China for refining. Which is why getting your hands on these critical minerals is the first step. I think it's also worth remembering that when President Trump sort of reiterates that maybe the US will just take Greenland, just take control of it.

Even if he were to take control of Greenland, mining the place is so difficult and so complicated that it wouldn't happen anytime in his presidency. It's very easy to sort of speak in superlatives about a place like Greenland and about the untapped mineral wealth there is in Greenland when in fact getting to those minerals but also finding use for the minerals, refining them, putting them in this supply chain in a way that's sustainable for Western national security interests, it's so much more complicated than just taking control of a piece of land. That's all for today, Thursday, March 20th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal.

If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're out every weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.