Rare earths hopeful in eye of Greenland political storm

Yahoo

15-02-2025

An Australian mining company with a stalled rare earths project in Greenland warns the territory risks damaging its reputation with foreign investors the longer a legal dispute drags on.
Greenlanders go to the polls on March 11 in a web of geopolitical tensions, including a Western desire to break China's rare earths monopoly and new US tariffs on several nations and imports of steel and aluminium.
The autonomous Danish territory of 57,000 people was thrust into the international spotlight in January after US President Donald Trump reiterated his desire to take control of the mineral-rich island.
Greenland responded to Trump: "We are open for business, but we're not for sale".
But Australian miner Energy Transition Minerals disputes that business-friendly claim, saying: "At the moment there is a closed door."
Since 2007 the company has sought to develop the Kvanefjeld mine project in southern Greenland, one of the world's largest rare earth mineral deposits that also has uranium in the mix.
The Perth junior miner has accused the present Greenland government of "moving the goalposts" and effectively halting the project after the 2021 election, by passing a law banning the mining of uranium - including as a by-product.
"Open for business means something different, it means being able to find compromise. It means being able to find solutions together," Energy Transition Minerals managing director Daniel Mamadou told AAP.
"After significant investment ... we are now being told to simply pack up and go. That is not acceptable."
Mr Mamadou characterised the moratorium as "uniquely designed to stop our project" with a retroactive impact, adding this behaviour "essentially damages investor confidence".
Venture capitalists are funding the company's legal case that is now before a tribunal in Copenhagen and Greenland courts.
Mr Mamadou recently travelled to Greenland on an attempted charm offensive, saying he wants to start a "new dialogue" and seek a negotiated outcome.
The trip coincided with Greenland entering its election campaign, however, and politicians gave the company a wide berth.
In the capital Nuuk, the Australian miners received a warm reception from Greenland's business community that has long spruiked the territory as a mining investment destination, including at promotional days in Perth.
Greenland Business Association director Christian Keldsen said the Australian company's legal case was frequently brought up by foreign companies whenever he did promotional talks.
"(From the association's perspective) we are concerned about the loss of potential jobs and possibilities from any mining project that doesn't go forward," Mr Keldsen told AAP.
"What we are working for is to be a reliable jurisdiction where the framework and the conditions aren't changed somewhere in the process."
Despite the prospect of creating about 300 jobs for Greenlanders, the project is deeply unpopular in Narsaq, a town of 1500 people located about eight kilometres from the proposed mine.
Sub-zero temperatures and about a dozen Narsaq protesters greeted the Australian mining executives' helicopter.
Many worry about the environmental impact of radioactive dust from the proposed open pit mine, as well as the potential leakage of radioactive tailings.
The region is considered Greenland's breadbasket and farmers are grazing some 20,000 sheep.
There are fears for food production, human health and potential water contamination affecting fish and whales in the fjord, says anti-uranium campaigner Niels Henrik Hooge from the Danish environmental organisation Noah.
Mr Mamadou insists the environmental impact assessment and project design are world class and the company would guarantee Narsaq residents' safety.
But mine opponent Mariane Paviasen Jensen, a government MP from Narsaq, said such assurances fell flat and the timing of the visit was inappropriate.
"I do believe that they are trying to interfere with our (upcoming) election," she told AAP.
The mine threatens the survival of the town, Ms Jensen said.
"It is not an option because if they get (permission) to dig, it will mean the end of Narsaq," she said.
Any potential displacement of Narsaq residents would feed into the trauma of Greenland's difficult colonial past with Denmark.
Some Greenlanders were forced to move from a settlement in the 1950s to make way for an expanded US Thule Air Base.
Sensitivities about uranium also run deep - the US secretly built another military base deep within Greenland's ice sheet, where it planned to potentially launch nuclear missiles at the Soviet Union if war broke out.
In 1968, a US bomber carrying four nuclear bombs crashed in northwest Greenland contaminating a fjord.
As Greenland's politicians hit the hustings, political campaigning centres on a growing push for independence, perhaps supercharged by Trump's interest.
But financial dependence on Denmark and a tiny economy heavily reliant on fishing remain sticking points to achieving that dream.
While the left-wing Inuit Ataqatigiit Party narrowly came to power on an anti-mine stance in 2021, the Kvanefjeld mine has support from the centre-left Siumut Party.
Whoever forms the next Greenlandic government will have to deal with mounting legal bills as the dispute with the Australian miner rolls on.
But Greenland observers are reluctant to say the mining project is dead in the water.
"The project never dies in the sense that the deposit is there. The uranium and the rare earth minerals are in the ground until someone digs them up. In that sense it could be resurrected any day," Danish Institute of International Studies senior researcher Ulrik Pram Gad said.