The new left government of Greenland has decided to suspend the search for oil in the territory and in the seas of the island, which is located in the extreme north of the Atlantic Ocean, between Canada and Iceland. No significant discoveries had been made so far, but the US Geological Survey, a scientific agency of the American government, estimated that there could be an amount of oil equal to 17.5 billion barrels. The decision was made on 24 June but was announced on Thursday 15 July.
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The government called the choice a “natural step” and indispensable to tackle climate change. “The future is not in oil,” the government wrote in a note, “But it belongs to renewable energy and in this sense we have much more to gain”.
The possible discovery of an oil field was considered by the Greenlandic government as a way to become independent from Denmark, which still has control over finances, foreign policy and military, and guarantees an annual subsidy of 3.4 billion Danish crowns. approximately 450 million euros.
The territory of Greenland is rich in precious raw materials: its rich deposits of rare metals, for example, attract the interest of several foreign mining companies. Community Inuit, the independence party that won the last elections, is not against the exploitation of mineral resources in general but during the electoral campaign it insisted a lot on the fact that they must be sustainable for the environment.
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