![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldPeter Levring and Christian Wienberg of Bloomberg note how the low price of oïl is dooming Greenland's hope of becoming an exporter, and with it, hopes of full independence from Denmark.
After decades of estimates that Greenland may be sitting on oil reserves big enough to meet almost two years of European demand, the Arctic island is throwing in the towel.
Oil is now simply too cheap for Greenland to continue dreaming of the oil bonanza that captured the imagination of its citizens less than a decade ago.
“It’s frustrating,” Kim Kielsen, the leader of Greenland’s home-rule government, said in Copenhagen on Monday. “There are still geological areas in which there is an interest, but the world price has dropped, as you know.”
With Brent crude hovering around $36 a barrel, prices have now plunged almost 70 percent since a June 2014 high. That’s nowhere near enough to make it profitable to try to extract oil off Greenland’s shores. The Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland estimates production costs could be as high as $50 a barrel for the island, where exploration would be hampered by massive floating icebergs, among other Arctic-style impediments.
