Greenland Joins the Oil Rush

Jørn Skov Nielsen, deputy director of Greenland’s Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum, said there may be more oil there than the entire past production of the North Sea. That’s about 50 billion barrels, according to figures from Norway and Britain, the region’s biggest producers.

Here’s where the numbers get silly and completely speculative. If there was 50 billion barrels of oil and if prices stayed at $US100 a barrel, that would equate to $US5 trillion worth, a huge windfall for the autonomous Danish territory’s 56,000 inhabitants.

‘’This is an epoch-making time, and how we handle it will be of colossal significance,'’ said Aleqa Hammond, Greenland’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and Finance. ‘’Greenland will be a player in the global arena in many more ways than we can even begin to imagine.'’

While geologists have known that Greenland had crude reserves since oil was discovered seeping out of rocks along the coast in the 1990s, the ice surrounding much of the world's largest island made getting to it unfeasible.

With crude prices up 63 percent in the past year to about $103 a barrel and the ice melting, the reserves have become potentially more lucrative.

Last October, Greenland's government awarded exploration licenses to Chevron Corp., Exxon Mobil Corp. and Husky Energy Inc. The companies are collecting seismic data to determine the best drilling locations.

See a map of the areas that the awarded licences cover.