Greenland Energy, a U.S. oil company established last year with ties to President Donald Trump, recently unloaded drilling equipment on Greenland’s eastern coast without securing permission from local authorities, The Guardian reported on 8 August.
Greenland’s Department of Industry and Minerals issued a “strong warning” that it had authorized neither the shipment nor its arrival on shore, stating that every logistical step tied to the project must be cleared in advance by the mineral resources authority.
Residents of the thinly populated Jameson Land region had watched a tug haul a barge toward the coast and offload roughly a dozen containers. The equipment was brought in for planned oil exploration drilling at Nunap Qeqqa, according to the government statement.
Executives at the firm have claimed that as much as $1 trillion worth of crude lies beneath Jameson Land, with the site chosen partly because it is isolated.
The head of the shipping company confirmed to Danish investigative outlet Danwatch that Greenland Energy was the recipient.
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Greenland Energy had already acknowledged that its representatives told residents, falsely, that permission to bring the equipment ashore was in hand, which chairman Larry Swets attributed to confusion.
Nuuk concluded that ordering the containers removed “would not be proportionate,” leaving the government to choose between licensing drilling in an area that may fall under wetlands protection or refusing and risking handing Trump an opening to press his claim harder.
Two days after the government warning, Trump published a post on Truth Social depicting himself looming over a Greenlandic village amid renewed threats to seize the island.
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Greenland Energy, a Texas-based company established just last year, is pressing ahead with the drilling plans regardless, with a company representative saying a vessel loaded with 300 shipping containers of drilling gear is due to leave Canada on 12 September, and drilling set to start in October.
This comes despite Trump claiming that his ambitions in Greenland are purely for national security and not for mineral or resource extraction purposes, alleging that Russia and China maintain a constant presence around the Island.
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Beyond crude, Greenland sits on the world’s third-largest known land deposit of rare earths, along with extensive germanium and gallium reserves critical to the manufacture of semiconductors.
Trump revived discussions around the possible US annexation of the semi-autonomous Danish territory during the NATO summit in Turkiye on 8 July.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen responded that Greenland is “not for sale,” and that Copenhagen and Nuuk expect all allies to respect the island’s right to self-determination and Denmark’s territorial integrity.
Asked whether Denmark would defend the island against an incursion, she said the country was “ready to defend every inch of NATO, including our own territory,” and expected alliance members to honor their collective defense commitments.