Is Greenland really an untapped land of riches?

0:01NPR

0:11When Greg Barnes was at college in Australia, he decided to study geology because the other subjects ended too late in the day. I couldn't catch the train home to see my girlfriend on a Friday night. Priorities, am I right? Love, not academics. So Greg's geology career took him all over the world. He made a lot of money fixing up old mines. Eventually, he started exploring Greenland in the 1990s. There, he found a mineral deposit unlike any other he'd seen. When I saw this thing, I just couldn't believe that something of this size and quality was sitting out there. This is The Indicator from Planet Money.

0:49I'm Darian Woods. And I'm Waylon Wong. President Trump has ratcheted up his goal of acquiring Greenland in recent days. He announced new tariffs for several European countries unless the U.S. takes over the island. Trump has stated national security as a reason for this pursuit. But at least one Trump official has said it's also about mineral wealth. On today's show, is Greenland really an untapped land of riches? and the story of an Australian geologist who found himself caught in the middle of a struggle between great powers.

1:27This week, President Trump said he was going to meet global leaders about Greenland while at the financial summit in Davos, Switzerland. He said Greenland is imperative for national security, and while Trump has denied that Greenland's minerals are a motivation for him, Trump's former security advisor, Mike Waltz, said this on Fox News last year. This is about critical minerals. This is about natural resources. Greenland has large deposits of rare earth minerals, but no commercial rare earth mining. One company, though, is getting close. Geologist Greg Barnes investigated Greenland's mineral deposits in the 1990s, visiting sites by helicopter.

2:07He was stunned by one site in particular near the southwest tip. This one's stood out like a sore thumb. In fact, of all the geology deposits on Earth, this should be one that every geologist should go to before he dies. And there's hundreds of minerals, all unique, all very big. What excited Greg so much was a mineral called eudialite. Basically, think of a shiny red or pink gemstone. What he knew was that this contains rare earth elements. Yeah, like he found cerium in it. That can be used to reduce emissions in cars. He also found yttrium, which is used in some lithium batteries to prolong their life.

2:44And neodymium, which makes up the strongest magnet in the world. And outside of China, processed rare earth elements are in short supply. It's only a little bit of an exaggeration to say that China froze the trade war with the U.S. simply by pulling down the lever on its rare earth exports. The Ford Explorer had to freeze production. A week later, a Volvo factory in South Carolina paused over a parts shortage. So even in the 1990s, the possibility of a rare earth's motherlode was tantalizing for Greg. Back then, a Canadian group had an exploration license for the site. Greg tried to negotiate a deal with them over eight years, but nothing materialized.

3:24How he finally got a hold of it involved some swift action. In Greg's retelling, the Canadians let their permit expire, and they were going to quickly apply for a new one the day after. In the industry, this is called repegging. That's a throwback to when you had actual pegs on the ground marking your claims. Well, Canada's time zones mean they wake up a little later than in Greenland, where Greg was. I was on Greenland at the time, so I pegged it much to the dissatisfaction. Yeah, he swiged that license in the nick of time. And he called the site Tanbreeze. Now, an exploration license was all very well.

4:01But to make actual money, he needed an exploitation license from the Greenlandic government. and that meant a lot of money over years proving that what he was sitting on was viable. I spent$50 million of my own money. I never spent$50 million of my own money on anything before. I've never had close to the amount to spend on anything, much less an exploitation license. So for Greg, there was the commercial considerations, like can you efficiently extract those rare earths from the red eudolite? But then there's also the community consent situation. So would a majority of Greenlanders support a mine that dug up their land and potentially risked toxic pollution?

4:41Rare Earths mining in particular is challenging because they're often found with radioactive materials. In Greenland, this is uranium. Gracelyn Baskaron is a critical minerals expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. That's a DC-based think tank where she's written about Greenland's minerals, including Greg's project. Social license to operate, which is your ability to run without that community kind of stopping it, is regularly ranked number one or two in the risks that miners face. Gracelyn says from her research, she found that Greg Barnes' company did a lot to hit off any Greenlander composition.

5:19They had a very participatory engagement approach with communities. They interviewed over 65 residents that were engaged in industries that could be harmed by mining. So we're talking about hunting, farming, fishing. The project really wanted to develop local benefits. 65 people, by the way, as a share of Greenland's 57 ,000 population was actually pretty high. To the community, Greg emphasized the relatively low concentration of uranium in his deposits compared to others in Greenland. And this approach seemed to pay off. In 2020, he was granted an exploitation license, basically a license to start extracting rocks if certain conditions were met over the next several years.

6:02And in 2021, Greenland banned mining where uranium concentrations were above a certain level. This effectively blocked other major projects, but not Greg's, which was below the threshold. Today, Greg's plan is starting to come into focus. That mine will go into production sometime this year or next, producing rare earths. Now, Grayson Bascaran has strong doubts about whether Greg's story is representative of a wider treasure trove of mineral wealth in Greenland. The difficulty with Greenland is you can have a lot of good geology that doesn't necessarily make sure that it's economically viable to extract.

6:4080 percent of Greenland is still under ice. Do we have the energy, the roads, the infrastructure to bring these resources into fruition? And in a place like Greenland, that's a real challenge. There are 93 miles of roads. There is not enough energy. It is the lowest population density in the world. And quite frankly, a lot of people in Greenland don't want mining. So good geology, not a straightforward place to get the resources out. This skepticism is echoed by a lot of other minerals experts. As Greg's story shows, even getting to the cusp of production is a project that can take decades. Getting the project to where it is today meant that Greg accidentally found himself in the middle of a geopolitical power struggle.

7:26A Beijing-linked buyer offered to buy Greg's company. It offered many multiples over his$50 million investment. When the U.S. government caught wind of this, they were not happy. According to Greg, U.S. officials visited the mine twice in 2024 with one message. Do not sell to the Chinese company. Greg ended up selling to a New York company called Critical Metals Corporation for a deal worth over$200 million. And under the Trump administration, the U.S. Export-Import Bank has signaled support for investing in the project. Greg still advises on it. I've got my money back with space. Well, congratulations.

8:08Well, it still is 14 hours a day, seven days a week, as I did a handover. And my grade age of 77, all my friends are retired long while ago, but I'm not. Greg picked geology in college so he'd get out of class earlier, but now it's extending his working life. It did not work out as planned. Oh, man. That place seems to have a way of doing that. Maybe Greg doesn't think in regular time. He thinks in geologic time. So it's okay. That's true. What is it but a blip on the clock? That's deep. This episode was produced by Angel Carreras with Engineering by Robert Rodriguez. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez.

8:52Julia Ritchie edited this episode and Kate McCannon edits the show. The Indicator is a production of NPR.