Greenland Energy postpones winter drilling after landing gear without permission
Greenland Energy Company said it will not drill for oil in East Greenland this winter, two weeks after Greenland’s Ministry of Mineral Resources reprimanded its joint venture partner for putting equipment ashore without permission.
Permits are now targeted for winter 2027. The Nasdaq-listed company said the Government of Greenland had told its partner, 80 Mile plc, that the project needs a more extensive review. 80 Mile holds the licenses and runs the permitting. It confirmed the delay to the London Stock Exchange the same day.
“Operating in the Arctic requires patience, flexibility and a long-term perspective,” said Robert Price, chief executive of Greenland Energy Company.
The equipment arrived on July 29 and 30, when a tugboat towed a barge carrying an excavator and more than a dozen containers into Nerlerit Inaat, about 40 kilometers from Ittoqqortoormiit. Danwatch, which has led reporting on the project, found that Permagreen Grønland had been hired by Greenland Energy for the run.
The following day the ministry said the license holder had no approval to land the equipment and all future logistics must be cleared in advance. It stopped short of ordering the containers removed.
80 Mile, however, says the gear came from its Dundas ilmenite project in the northwest, was stored under a lease with state-owned Greenland Airports A/S, and that it had not realized a separate permit from the mines regulator was needed. Naalakkersuisut says the equipment was landed at Nunap Qeqqa for planned oil exploration drilling. Either way, the permits were not coming.
An information page Naalakkersuisut put up last week places the project at the first of 11 steps in the exploration phase. The project description goes out for 35 days of consultation, then environmental and social impact assessments are drawn up and consulted on for eight weeks more, then an impact benefit agreement is negotiated. Nov. 8 is the earliest anything could be approved, and only if nothing slipped.
Jørgen Hammeken-Holm, head of the Ministry of Mineral Resources, told Danwatch drilling this winter was not possible.
The wells sit in Ramsar-protected wetlands, where drilling is confined to winter, but the heavy equipment can only come in by barge in summer. Five days before the reversal, Greenland Energy told shareholders that meetings with regulators had been constructive and the project was on schedule.
Greenland stopped issuing oil licenses in 2021. White Flame Energy A/S, an 80 Mile subsidiary, holds three that predate the ban, the last in the country. Greenland Energy came to Nasdaq in March through a SPAC merger, raised $70 million in April, and stands to take a majority stake in exchange for funding the drilling. Its executives have put as much as $1 trillion of crude under Jameson Land. The Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland estimates about 2.35 billion barrels of oil equivalent.
The Guardian reported this month that Greenland Energy has appointed to its board a U.S. Navy veteran working on Golden Dome, the missile defense program Trump has cited in arguing for American control of Greenland. Two days after the ministry’s warning, Trump posted an image of himself standing over a Greenlandic village on Truth Social.
Still unresolved is the ship. Greenland Energy has said 300 containers and a rig would sail from Canada on Sept. 12, and Danwatch reported that Desgagnés confirmed the booking. Hammeken-Holm said no application had been made to land any of it, and that a shipment that size would go through consultation of its own.
The companies could sail if they wanted, he said. They could not come ashore.
