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US and European mining companies need to hurry up and invest in Greenland otherwise it will have to look elsewhere for help exploiting its minerals, including from China, a minister for the vast Arctic territory has warned.
“We want to develop our business sector and diversify it, and that requires investments from outside,’’ Naaja Nathanielsen, Greenland’s minister for business and mineral resources, told the Financial Times.
When asked about turning to China, she replied: ‘‘We do want to partner up with European and American partners. But if they don’t show up I think we need to look elsewhere.”
The comments demonstrate Greenland’s desire to get western help to expand its economy in mining and tourism, with United Airlines due to start flying from New York to the capital Nuuk from next month.
Greenland is home to large but fairly inaccessible deposits of minerals including gold and copper, and is located in a geopolitically crucial area in the Arctic.
Nathanielsen said a current memorandum of understanding on mineral development with the US — signed during Donald Trump’s first presidency — was coming to an end and that Greenland tried unsuccessfully during the Biden administration to see if Washington wanted to renew it.
Trump has repeatedly insisted that the US will take over Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark, potentially by force.
“We sort of hoped that the Trump administration would be more willing to engage in dialogue with Greenland about the mineral sector development. We got a bit more than we asked for, because we have no wish to be American,” she added.
Nathanielsen told the FT that she found Trump’s threats to take control of Greenland “disrespectful and distasteful”. Her comments underscore the increasing anger felt by Greenlanders at Trump’s aggressive approach to the island of 57,000 people.
She said that despite Trump’s rhetoric, there was little interest from China in mining deals — right now there are only two Chinese mining companies in Greenland, but both are minority shareholders in inactive projects. She speculated that Chinese investors might be holding back because they don’t want “to provoke anything”.
Her comments come as the country hailed the awarding of its first licence under a new mining code to a Danish-French group to extract anorthosite, a mineral used in the fibreglass industry.
The €150mn mining project in Western Greenland aims to start construction as soon as next year, according to Claus Stoltenborg, chief executive of Greenland Anorthosite Mining.
The company’s backers include a Greenlandic state pension fund, Danish bank Arbejdernes Landsbank, and Jean Boulle, a French mining group.
Greenland has only two operating mines, producing gold and anorthosite, while production has not started at a further two mines that have received a mining licence.
Nathanielsen said the new four-party coalition government in Nuuk was ‘‘first and foremost committed to creating development for Greenland and Greenlanders” and would prefer to work with “allies and like-minded partners”.
But she added that Greenland was “having a difficult time finding our footing” in the changing nature of the western alliance.
“We are trying to figure out, what does the new world order look like? In those terms, Chinese investment is of course problematic, but so, to some extent, is American,” she said. “Because what are the purpose of [the US investments]?”
The EU is a “good fit” for Greenland as it had few of the minerals it needs itself, Nathanielsen added, as well as being aligned on environmental metrics.