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Comment by jbl0ndie | Hacker News Reader

That looks significantly more like a long-term energy strategy than grabbing oil from Venezuela and Greenland.

Greenland's appeal is more about expanding the US military's presence in the Arctic rather than petroleum.

US military already has a base there.

If you think there is oil in Greenland I think you should not contribute to these types of discussion for lack of knowledge on the topic.

Was curious, so I did a 30 second search:

"The US Geological Survey estimates that onshore northeast Greenland (including ice-covered areas) contains around 31 billion barrels of oil-equivalent in hydrocarbons – similar to the US’s entire volume of proven crude oil reserves."

Source: https://theconversation.com/greenland-is-rich-in-natural-res...

Another 30 second search would show you that their oil is not readily available and is unproven. Otherwise Denmark would already be an even wealthier petrostate like Norway.

OK, so...there is oil in Greenland, and your snarky response was actually completely incorrect. Got it.

He’s correct there is oil but there is oil everywhere. Whether it’s feasible to extract it is another thing. Do you really think if they had worthwhile oil reserves that someone wouldn’t have thought to extract it? So I would say Greenland doesn’t have any oil which means they don’t have any worthwhile oil to extract.

Regardless, the US isn’t taking over Greenland for its oil. That is just ridiculous and there would be far easier targets to go after if that was the case.

> "Denmark would already be an even wealthier petrostate"

Denmark does not (since 2009) control Greenland's minerals, nor take revenues from resource extraction[0,1]; and Greenland's democratic government has in fact totally banned oil exploration[2].

[0] https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-neglect-greenland-min... ("In 2009, Denmark handed Greenland's inhabitants control of their natural resources...")

[1] https://english.stm.dk/the-prime-ministers-office/the-unity-... ("Revenues from mineral resource activities in Greenland are to accrue to the Self-Government. Such revenues will have influence on the size of the Danish Government subsidy, cf. section below on the economic arrangement.")

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27871672 ("Greenland bans all oil exploration (cbc.ca)" (2021))

> "Global warming means that retreating ice could uncover potential oil and mineral resources which, if successfully tapped, could dramatically change the fortunes of the semi-autonomous territory of 57,000 people."

> ""The future does not lie in oil. The future belongs to renewable energy, and in that respect we have much more to gain," the Greenland government said in a statement. The government said it "wants to take co-responsibility for combating the global climate crisis."

Let’s be honest with ourselves. If there were hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars of accessible oil underneath Greenland they would start drilling tomorrow.

Also, Idk what that source is but the US has way more barrels than that. Proven reserves mean that’s what’s been proven via drilling, not speculative (which is what the Greenland barrels are). There is a lot more “unproven” oil out there but it doesn’t make for a sensationalist statement that fools readers.

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