Anticipating Climate Change, Greenland Suspends Petroleum Exploration

North Pole illustration. (Wikimedia Commons/Stefan Hendricks)

JAKARTA - Greenland authorities have decided to suspend all oil exploration on the world's largest island, calling it a natural move, due to the current climate crisis.

No oil has yet been discovered around Greenland, however, officials there have seen the huge potential reserves, as a way to help the Greenlanders realize their long-held dream of independence from Denmark by cutting annual subsidies by 3.4 billion kroner or about 540 million dollars. United States of America,

Global warming means melting ice could reveal Greenland's potential oil and mineral resources, which if tapped into, could dramatically change the fate of the semi-autonomous region of 57,000 people.

“The future doesn't lie in oil. The future belongs to renewables, and in that we have more to gain,” the Greenland Government said in a statement, citing CNA Sunday, July 18.

The Greenland government has said it wants to take shared responsibility for fighting the global climate crisis. The decision was made on June 24, but was only announced Thursday, July 15.

Greenland's Minister of Natural Resources Naaja Nathanielsen said the environmental and climate impacts of further oil and gas extraction were overestimated, weighed against the potential benefits and financials.

"This step was taken for the sake of our nature, for our fisheries, for our tourism industry, and to focus our business on its sustainable potential," Nathanielsen said, citing DW.

Illustration of research in the North Pole. (Wikimedia Commons/Alfred Wegener Institute/Esther Horvath)

The United States Geological Survey previously estimated there were 17.5 billion barrels of undiscovered oil and 148 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in Greenland, although the island's remote location and bad weather have limited exploration in the Arctic.

Meanwhile, Energy Minister Kalistat Lund said, Greenland is experiencing the consequences of climate change every day, so the threat of climate change is a serious matter and takes climate change seriously.

"Parliament, Naalakkersuisut, is working to attract new investment for the huge hydropower potential that we cannot exploit on our own," said Lund.

As the current government, led by the Inuit Ataqatigiit Party since April parliamentary elections, immediately began to fulfill election promises and halt uranium mining plans in southern Greenland.

Greenland still has four active hydrocarbon exploration permits, which must be maintained as long as the permit holder is actively exploring. They are held by two small companies.

Separately, the Greenland Government's decision to halt oil exploration was welcomed by environmental group Greenpeace, who called the decision fantastic.

"And my understanding is, the remaining licenses have very limited potential," Mads Flarup Christensen, secretary general of Greenpeace Nordic, told Danish weekly technology magazine Ingenioeren.