Cold Rush by Martin Breum

Author:Martin Breum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MQUP
Published: 2018-12-11T16:00:00+00:00

6

GREENLAND – AN ARCTIC OIL STATE

The ocean floor beneath Greenland’s waters holds immense oil and gas deposits, or so the geologists say. For decades, Greenland has dreamt of sudden riches, but so far none of the foreign companies operating in Greenland’s waters have found oil or gas worth extracting. Meanwhile, the quest for oil and gas is changing Greenland and frustrating millions outside the country. They fear catastrophic oil spills, degradation of Greenland’s pristine environment and accelerated climate change. Again, Greenland takes centre stage in a global debate. Some argue that Arctic oil should not be extracted at all; others ask why Greenland and its less than 60,000 people must be the first on earth not to exploit its natural resources.

* * *

Jørgen Hammeken-Holm points to a dot on the map showing potential oil fields off the coast of north east Greenland. He explains to me that even the northern areas, which have for millennia been inaccessible because of the ice drift from the Arctic Ocean, will soon be accessible to the oil industry. We are in 2012. The number of ice-free days enabling ships to sail untroubled along the north eastern coast steadily increases. Despite the fact that this number can vary significantly from year to year, Jørgen Hammeken-Holm has no doubts – oil rigs can be established even off Greenland’s north eastern coast within the foreseeable future. He points to the map: ‘Look at this! Here you can easily see how the concentration of ice continuously decreases.’

As head of the Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum’s licence office in Nuuk, Jørgen Hammeken-Holm has been centrally placed during Greenland’s negotiations with the world’s biggest oil companies for years. In August 2012, he became the Bureau’s principal manager. Jørgen Hammeken-Holm was one of the authors of the 2009 strategy, which outlined Greenland’s oil reserves and how Greenland intended to manage them.

By the end of 2012, Greenland has entered into agreements with American ExxonMobil and Chevron, Norwegian Statoil, Danish DONG and Mærsk Oil, Scottish Cairn Energy, Swedish and Canadian companies – and more were lined up. No one has located a single drop of oil in Greenlandic waters and most minerals also remain unexploited. However, the astronomical expectations along with a determined political focus on oil and minerals has already changed Greenlandic society.

In particular, two areas off Greenland’s coast illustrate this development: On these locations, the oil industry will be working offshore farther north than anywhere else on the planet. Among specialists, the two areas are known as KANUMAS, Kalaallit Nunaat Marine Seismic. Nobody knows the magnitude of the oil reserves in these areas for certain, but the oil industry is used to the unknown; it is vital for them to secure access to the large – and largely unknown – reserves in the Arctic, as they are perceived to be some of the last ones on the planet. The mere potential of oil is enough to keep stock prices high.

On 1 December 2009, an international auction on the 14 concessions in the KANUMAS area off north west Greenland was launched by the Self-Rule Government in Nuuk.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.