What natural resources are there on the island?

Donald Trump has made it clear he covets Greenland.

Now he claims to have obtained The ‘framework’ for future dealsto address the island’s defense issues – he said the agreement included rights to rare earth minerals.

So what natural resources does Greenland have?

Greenland is believed to have vast reserves of oil and natural gas.

It is also said to be home to the vast majority of raw materials critical to electronics, green energy and other strategic and military technologies — technologies that Trump has pushed to ensure U.S. access to.

Overall, 25 of the 34 minerals considered “critical raw materials” by the European Commission are found in Greenland, including graphite, niobium and titanium, according to the 2023 Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas told a Senate hearing on the acquisition of Greenland last year that Greenland’s strategic importance “goes beyond national defense,” noting that the island is “rich in rare earth elements.”

Trump has at times downplayed the importance of these resources and pointed to what he claims is Russia and China’s rising influence in the region to justify his assertion that the United States must “own” the island.

“I want Greenland for security — I don’t want it for anything else,” he told reporters at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, pointing in part to the difficulties of exploring in the Arctic. “You have to go 25 feet through the ice to get it. That’s not, that’s not something a lot of people would do or want to do.”

But the issue of access to the island’s natural resources has taken on new importance in the context of the Trump administration, which has placed the U.S. economy at the center of its geopolitical vision and made combating China’s dominance of the rare earths industry a priority.

Steven Lamy, a professor of international relations at the University of Southern California, said Trump’s interest in controlling Greenland “is primarily to access these resources and prevent China from accessing them.”

Even before Trump was re-elected, the United States had been strengthening ties with Greenland, including reopening its consulate in the island’s capital Nuuk in 2020, in response to Russia and China’s expanding military presence in the Arctic.

Since Trump returned to office, his allies have been talking about the island’s commercial potential as rising temperatures expand sea lanes and the opportunity to explore the region’s fisheries and other natural resources, especially defense-related resources such as energy and critical minerals, which the administration views as a priority.

“This is about waterways. This is about energy. This is about fisheries. And, of course, this is about your mission to keep us safe, to monitor space, to monitor our adversaries, and to make sure that the American people can sleep safely in their homes day in and day out,” Mike Walz, now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and then Trump’s national security adviser, told U.S. troops in Greenland last year.

Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry told CNBC this month that Trump is a “business president” and that he believes the island represents “stronger trade opportunities.”

This summer, the Trump administration approved the possibility of supporting a US company’s mining project in Greenland with $120m (£90m) of financing from the US Export-Import Bank.

The plan builds on other deals the Trump administration has struck with Australia and Japan, as well as private industry, to secure U.S. access to supplies and production of rare earths, an industry currently dominated by China.

Dr Patrick Schroeder, a senior fellow at Chatham House, said the scale of Greenland’s critical mineral resources had the potential to “change course” for the US to become less reliant on China – a key priority for the government.

But critics of Trump’s plans for the island say it’s unclear why U.S. control is needed to access the island’s resources.

Analysts also warn that exploiting them is easier said than done.

Among other challenges, mining in Greenland is currently expensive and hampered by harsh weather conditions, a lack of infrastructure and a small workforce, Lamy said.

Although Greenland has 100 blocks with exploration licenses, there are only two productive mines in Greenland.

“Greenland has long tried to attract outside investment into its extractive industries but has had no luck because the business case has not really materialized,” said Mikkel Runge-Olsen, a senior fellow at the Danish Institute for International Studies.

“Greenland does have large deposits of various minerals. However, it also costs a lot of money to extract these minerals.”

But Professor Andrew Shepherd, director of the Center for Polar Observation and Modeling, said rapidly melting ice was increasingly simplifying the process, exposing rock for potential mining and generating river runoff.

“It’s very difficult to do all the field work in the traditional way because you have to transport the energy to remote areas,” he told the BBC.

“As the ice melts, there’s potential for hydroelectric power on the exposed land…so that’s an interesting prospect in itself.”

Jennifer Spence, director of the Arctic Initiative at the Harvard Kennedy School, said that when it comes to mining in Greenland, “it all still depends on the potential.”

Still, she cited the island’s strategic shipping location and rare earth mineral deposits as key factors in attracting Trump’s attention.

“His logic is that national security is the top priority,” Spencer said. “I believe it’s more economically driven.”

Additional reporting by Natalie Sherman