{"id":243983,"date":"2026-01-18T01:25:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-18T01:25:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/243983\/"},"modified":"2026-01-18T01:25:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-18T01:25:16","slug":"global-ai-race-makes-greenlands-critical-minerals-a-tempting-target","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/243983\/","title":{"rendered":"Global AI race makes Greenland’s critical minerals a tempting target"},"content":{"rendered":"

Though Greenland has over 140 active mineral licenses, which must be issued before mines can be constructed, there are only two active mines<\/a> in Greenland today.<\/p>\n

CEO Eldur Olafsson of Amaroq Ltd.<\/a>, the company behind one of the two active mines, argues his company\u2019s gold mine in southern Greenland proves that Greenlandic mining operations are possible with the right approach.<\/p>\n

\u201cDenmark is not really a resource-driven country, so the capital support up until this date has not been enough to get more mining going,\u201d Olafsson told NBC News. \u201cFor mining you need more than money. You also need people. You need to physically move people and build infrastructure, make roads, bridges, harbors, all of these different things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even Greenland\u2019s harsh climate and sparse population \u2014 around 60,000 people live across the territory \u2014 do not dissuade Olafsson. \u201cIt\u2019s important to remember that Alaska, Canada, Norway, Sweden and Russia all have mines, some very big mines, across the Arctic region. These are among the best mines you can find in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe always need new mining areas, or we need to reprocess metal, to have enough metal for the revolution that is coming, which is AI and similar technology.\u201d Olafsson said.<\/p>\n

\"GeologistGeologist Greg Barnes, former owner of the Tanbreez rare earth minerals site, holds up a rock containing crystals at a mining site near Narsarsuaq in southern Greenland.Carsten Snejbjerg \/ Bloomberg via Getty Images file<\/p>\n

Yet even after a mine is operational, fluctuations in mineral prices can force mines to shutter \u2014 as happened with the Black Angel lead-zinc mine at Maarmorilik in west Greenland. Operational from 1973 until 1990, the mine was shut down with substantial untapped reserves but failed to reopen due to low zinc prices<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To support America\u2019s rare earth industry and address this price sensitivity, the Department of Defense in July entered into a unique 10-year public-private partnership<\/a> with American mining company MP Materials to bolster America\u2019s rare earth supply chain and wean America\u2019s magnet supply chains off of Chinese sources with a rare earth mine in Colorado.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Though Greenland has over 140 active mineral licenses, which must be issued before mines can be constructed, there…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243984,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,125],"class_list":["post-243983","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243983","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243983"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243983\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243983"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243983"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243983"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}