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The struggle for Greenland’s oil

The struggle for Greenland’s oil

2011-08-28
Source: FT

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Downtown Nuuk on a rainy evening in July has the air of a town wanting to be somewhere else. Cars wait patiently at the town’s two traffic lights while teenagers on BMX bikes ride aimlessly round the shopping precinct. The temperature hovers around 10C, the leaden skies touched by the faint hue of the midnight sun. It is high summer in the capital of Greenland, 150 miles south of the Arctic Circle.

On the streets, Inuit traders display their wares in cardboard boxes, selling anything from cut-price DVDs to fur hats. Large Soviet-style apartment blocks loom up behind – reminders of a misguided attempt in the 1950s and 1960s to urbanise the country’s population. Towards the old harbour and the rocky fringes of the grassy shoreline, wooden, two-storey houses painted blue, red and yellow are dots of colour in the grey.

All this could be about to change. About 750km north-west of Nuuk, out to sea, a Scottish company is drilling for oil. Greenland, the world’s largest island, with its tiny population of 56,000, is standing on the brink of an oil rush. The potential wealth that lies off its shores is turning the country – an empty wilderness three times the size of Texas – into a battleground. The global oil industry, striving to feed the world’s hunger for energy, is engaged in a struggle against environmental groups who believe that this delicate Arctic landscape should remain untouched....





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