The Flooded Earth by Peter D. Ward

Author:Peter D. Ward
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2010-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

NOT ICE BUT OIL

Greenland has challenged human occupiers since almost 5,000 years ago. By that time virtually every other place on the globe (except Antarctica and the more isolated island groups) had been visited and colonized by humanity. European civilization made its first foothold in the Middle Ages,21 around the year 982 BCE, with the arrival of Erik the Red, a resourceful and ambitious Norwegian who led an expedition in small open boats across the perilous seas from Scandinavia and established a colony. At first it prospered, because the earth had entered one of its warm phases. But by the middle of the 1400s, the earth had returned to a deep freeze, and the last of the hardy Viking settlers withdrew, leaving behind a cold, infertile landscape. The hardy Inuits watched them go, surely with mixed emotions.

Despite the fact that Norwegians were the first European colonists, Denmark first staked a claim on Greenland when missionaries constructed a trading post on the coast. In the 1800s there was a series of claims and counterclaims, even by the U.S. government, but Danish authority held sway. Today it is an important military and meteorological outpost for NATO forces, and the giant Thule Air Force Base has great strategic importance, situated as it is on the great circular bombing run between the United States and Russia. Over the past two decades Greenlanders have made ever more hue and cry for independence. The native settlers want to break from Danish rule, while the Danes are understandably hesitant to give the place up, especially since they have been pumping millions of dollars per year into its fragile economy.

The question of who owns Greenland will become increasingly important over the next decades, as more and more of its ice sheet melts, revealing what lies beneath. Even with its extensive cover, geologists have discovered economically important deposits of lead, zinc, and aluminum, and they expect other metals as well. Perhaps most valuable could be vast new petroleum reserves. Already by 2006, exploratory wells hit pay dirt, and the Greenland government, now a quasi-autonomous Danish protectorate, has since allowed major oil companies to undertake new searches in ever more remote regions.22 It is extremely expensive to sink wells over ice-covered regions, and some places will not support rigs at all. But whatever the other ramifications, a Greenland free of ice could become a new economic mecca, especially since the price for a barrel of oil near the end of this century, and into the next, will surely be far higher than it is today. Greenland’s oil should come on line just as many of the currently viable oil fields in the Middle East, South America, Indonesia, Africa, and North America are winding down, their product already gone up in smoke. This drop from what currently might be peak oil is causing alarm among the traditional oil producers, as well as the new ones, such as Russia—which means covetous eyes are now turned toward Greenland, and even more so to deeper water off its shore, areas currently in international waters.

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