President Donald Trump signed a security agreement with Denmark and Greenland on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday, formalizing an arrangement first announced last Friday that expands the U.S. military footprint on the Arctic island while leaving Greenland under Danish sovereignty.
The administration says the deal is meant to strengthen U.S. influence in the Arctic and encourage long-term investment on an island that holds potentially significant deposits of oil and critical minerals. Full details of the agreement have not been made public.
The push for a stronger American foothold in Greenland comes as wars in Ukraine and the Middle East expose weaknesses in global energy supply chains and reinforce Washington’s interest in cutting reliance on foreign sources of critical minerals.
“One of the reasons that we are exploring for oil in Greenland is because of what’s going on in the Strait of Hormuz right now,” said Robert Price, CEO of Greenland Energy Company and president of USFM Corporation, in an interview with Fox News Digital.
Price’s two companies are pursuing separate ventures on the island — an exploratory oil well planned for 2027 and ongoing mineral exploration in western Greenland.
Minerals and the China Question
Price framed the mineral push as a matter of not trading one foreign dependency for another. “We don’t want to be dependent on China for our rare earth minerals, and we don’t want to be dependent on Russia for them either,” he said. “Critical minerals, they touch every part of our lives, which includes our cellphones, our computers, batteries, power storage, power generation.”
USFM has been drilling around Disko Island in western Greenland in search of nickel, copper, palladium and cobalt — commodities used across electronics, batteries and manufacturing. Price compared the area’s potential to Russia’s Norilsk mining region, calling it possibly “one of the largest mining districts in the world.” That scale has not been proven; exploratory drilling is still underway.
Oil Ambitions on the Eastern Coast
Greenland Energy Company holds licenses on the island’s eastern side, where Price said the geology resembles the North Sea’s petroleum system. “Our licenses are similar to the same petroleum system as the North Sea,” Price said, adding that his company has sampled oil both on and below the surface. The company is pursuing permits for an exploratory well planned for 2027.
Strategic Ground
Beyond what lies underground, Greenland sits between North America and Europe with reach into the Arctic, giving it a role in U.S. defense strategy for decades. The Pentagon’s northernmost installation, Pituffik Space Base, is located there.
Price said the security agreement could give companies more confidence to commit to projects that take years to develop. “What it does is it shores up long-term investment in Greenland, and that’s what our projects are,” he said. “They’re long-term investments from oil, gas, and minerals. We’re really excited about this agreement.”
