Thaw exposes Greenland’s oil

In Greenland, locals hunt reindeer for food and use dog sleds to traverse the ice sheet. Soon they may be working on offshore oil rigs and counting their money.

Oil companies have begun looking for crude deposits off the west coast, and Joern 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.


… With crude prices up 63% 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 licences to Chevron, Exxon Mobil and Husky Energy. The companies are collecting seismic data to determine the best drilling sites.

Given the icy conditions, oil production may cost as much as $US46 per barrel, according to Oil and Gas Journal. While exploration is complicated by icebergs as tall as 15-storey buildings, global warming is helping.

Outside the Disko Bay area off the west coast, there were on average 180 ice-free days a year between 2000 and 2005, up from a 25-year average of 150 days, said Leif Toudal Pedersen, a spokesman at Denmark’s Meteorological Institute.

”If the ice in west Greenland continues to melt as dramatically as it has been doing in the past few years, then the cost of producing a barrel of oil will be closer to $20 than $50,” Nielsen said.

The Age