The left-leaning government of Greenland has decided to suspend all oil exploration off the world’s largest island, calling it is “a natural step” because the Arctic government “takes the climate crisis seriously.”

No oil has been found yet around Greenland, but officials there had seen potentially vast reserves as a way to help Greenlanders realize their long-held dream of independence from Denmark by cutting the annual subsidy of 3.4 billion kroner ($540 million) the Danish territory receives.

Global warming means that retreating ice could uncover potential oil and mineral resources which, if successfully tapped, could dramatically change the fortunes of the semiautonomous territory of 57,000 people.

“The future does not lie in oil. The future belongs to renewable energy, and in that respect we have much more to gain,” the Greenland government said in a statement. The government said it “wants to take co-responsibility for combating the global climate crisis.”

The decision was made June 24 but made public Thursday.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimates there could be 17.5 billion undiscovered barrels of oil and 148 trillion cubic feet of natural gas off Greenland, although the island’s remote location and harsh weather have limited exploration.

When the current government, led by the Inuit Ataqatigiit party since an April’s parliamentary election, it immediately began to deliver on election promises and stopped plans for uranium mining in southern Greenland.

Greenland still has four active hydrocarbon exploration licenses, which it is obliged to maintain as long as the licensees are actively exploring. They are held by two small companies.

The government’s decision to stop oil exploration was welcomed by environmental group Greenpeace, which called the decision ”fantastic.”

“And my understanding is that the licenses that are left have very limited potential,” Mads Flarup Christensen, Greenpeace Nordic’s general secretary, told weekly Danish tech-magazine Ingenioeren.

Denmark decides foreign, defense and security policy, and supports Greenland with the annual grant that accounts for about two-thirds of the Arctic island’s economy.

 

Related Stories
‹
Here’s What the Paris Climate Agreement Does and Doesn’t Do
The Paris agreement is a mostly voluntary climate pact. What does it do, and what does it mean as President Donald Trump removes the U.S.?
Town of Carrboro Files Lawsuit Against Duke Energy Over Climate Change and Deception on Fossil Fuel Effects
Carrboro is suing Duke Energy over its contributions to climate change and the resulting economic pressures put onto the local government.
Athletes Speak Their Fears: Climate Change Threatens Their Sports and Their Health
Written by DORANY PINEDA and MICHAEL PHILLIS BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) — Pragnya Mohan has been a professional triathlete for nearly a decade, but summers in her native India are now so hot that she can’t train there anymore. She escaped the heat to train in the United Kingdom, but worries about a day when a warming world […]
How the Hot Water That Fueled Hurricane Beryl Foretells a Scary Storm Season
Written by SETH BORENSTEIN Hurricane Beryl’s explosive growth into an unprecedented early whopper of a storm shows the literal hot water the Atlantic and Caribbean are in right now and the kind of season ahead, experts said. Beryl smashed multiple records even before its major-hurricane-level winds approached land. The powerful storm is acting more like monsters that […]
A Big Boost for a Climate Solution: Electricity Made From the Heat of the Earth
One method of making electricity cleanly to address climate change has been quietly advancing and on Tuesday it hit a milestone.
Fewer Fish and More Algae? Scientists Seek To Understand Impacts of Historic Lack of Great Lakes Ice
Written by TODD RICHMOND Michigan Tech University biologists have been observing a remote Lake Superior island’s fragile wolf population every winter since 1958, but they had to cut this season’s planned seven-week survey short after just two weeks. The ski plane they study the wolves from uses the frozen lake as a landing strip because […]
Earth Shattered Global Heat Record in ’23 and It’s Flirting With Warming Limit, European Agency Says
Written by SETH BORENSTEIN Earth last year shattered global annual heat records, flirted with the world’s agreed-upon warming threshold and showed more signs of a feverish planet, the European climate agency said Tuesday. In one of the first of several teams of science agencies to calculate how off-the-charts warm 2023 was, the European climate agency […]
Duke's Ashley Ward Reflects on COP28 — The UN Climate Conference
Nearly 100,000 participants  and 4,000 journalists attended COP28 earlier for two weeks in December, making it the largest climate conference ever. One of those attendees was Ashley Ward from Duke’s Nicholas Institute, who shared some reflections from the summit after it ended on December 13. Ward told 97.9 The Hill that she saw three major […]
5 Big Promises Made at Annual UN Climate Talks and What Has Happened Since
Written by GAURAV SAINI and SIBI ARASU When United Nations climate talks wrap up at some point this week in Dubai, big promises will likely be made about how the world is going to combat climate change, caused by the burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal. Negotiators are debating how fast fossil […]
Last 12 Months on Earth Were the Hottest Ever Recorded, Analysis Finds
Written by ISABELLA O’MALLEY The last 12 months were the hottest Earth has ever recorded, according to a new report by Climate Central, a nonprofit science research group. The peer-reviewed report says burning gasoline, coal, natural gas and other fossil fuels that release planet-warming gases like carbon dioxide, and other human activities, caused the unnatural warming […]
›