I believe it was less than a year ago when the Arctic defeated the best technology in the world at drilling a hole for oil. There are no rules there. Earth has two ice poles and they are supposed to be the thermostats of the planet. There is no taming either of the poles. Earth is a planet and it has it's own geophysical rules.
The reason Trump is digging up the old ideas of the petroleum industry is that they want to own the petroleum assets of Greenland. That is the primary reason there is any interest at all. I don't consider such activity in the Oval Office humorous.
Greenland and Denmark need to protect their country's assets. Someday, a century or two from now they might actually need it. At least there will still one country where oil is still in the ground when people actually need it.
December 19, 2012
By Andreas Østhagen
The prospect of offshore oil and gas activity (click here) in the waters around Greenland constitutes a highly contentious issue in the larger debate on Arctic petroleum development. Given Greenland’s special status as a part of the Danish Realm, with a high degree of self-governance and a majority Inuit population, oil and gas drilling there has engaged actors with a wide range of interests.
Arctic oil and gas development is often generalized into a two-sided conflict between those who emphasize the protection of the environment and those who seek potential profits, with the interests of local communities variably used in favor of one or the other depending on the area of the region under question. Some of the dimensions that seem to determine much of the actual development are often lost in this dichotomy, to the dismay of those in favor of an informed debate.
Taking into account that Greenland is just one of the many parts of the Arctic that is experiencing this development, with its own unique characteristics, this article sets out to shed light on the importance of internal political and commercial factors when discussing petroleum development around the island....
