Greenland opens to oil firms; melting ice unlocks reserves

HOUSTON (Dow Jones/AP) – Rising temperatures are giving Greenland the opportunity to tap into billions of barrels of oil and gas trapped under ice.

Greenland, a self-governed province of Denmark that’s roughly the size of Saudi Arabia, plans to auction off rights to crude-oil and natural-gas reserves officials believe will become feasible to exploit once the ice recedes. The island is setting a delicate balance for itself as both a bellwether to environmentalists looking for evidence of global warming, and as the latest frontier for oil and gas companies.


Greenland’s Bureau of Mines and Petroleum last week awarded oil and gas leases for tracts off its west coast, which is already free of ice for at least five months out of the year. The agency is now in the early stages of planning a similar sale for the northeast and northwest coasts, where exploration is difficult to impossible, even in summer months.

”There’s a lot of sea ice in those areas, but that sea ice is melting,” said Jorn Skov Nielsen, the department’s deputy minister. ”I definitely think we can have a licensing round in 2012, that will be an appropriate time to start exploration.”

Dow Jones Newswires