The crumpled figure in seat 22 on the Air Greenland flight from Ilulissat to Kangerlussuaq was no Indiana Jones. But Dennis Thomas, a mining engineer viewing gold and diamond prospects in the Arctic, was happy to play up the part. Ive been shot at and involved in all sorts of other scrapes, the 62-year-old said as the plane cruised at 3,300m. Thomas had spent 30 years scouring Latin America, the Far East and most other points around the globe, but this was his first time in Greenland. And it will not be his last. The Briton was impressed with what he had seen and said he would be back after discussions with various mining companies and investors who pay him a finders fee for putting them on to new, commercially viable, deposits.
This is a very exciting place ... There is only one working mine, but in 10 years I would like to see them with half a dozen serious mines, he said. It is not just small operations like Thomas Mining Associates, based in West Sussex, England, that are newly on the hunt as ice caps melt in the far north. Major companies have recently set foot in Greenland hoping to carve out literally a new mineral frontier. Political visits from countries such as China are also on the rise. They are being driven by the demand for a variety of precious stones and other commodities, which has driven up prices and sent prospectors on a frantic search for new supplies.
Greenland has long been known to harbor everything from uranium needed for nuclear plants to so-called rare earth minerals used in hardware such as mobile phones, flatscreen TVs and modern weaponry. The Arctic was largely off-limits because much of the land was considered unworkable, buried under hundreds of meters of snow and ice and with nothing in the way of traditional infrastructure. Global warming has changed that picture.
While Greenlands traditional way of hunting wild animals is endangered by the melting ice cap, mineral mining is entering a new, potentially lucrative chapter. More and more of the land is becoming ice-free unleashing greenhouse gases in the process, but offering new opportunities for diggers in the white gold rush. New mining applications are being submitted for extraction, from Canada through Greenland to Finland. The Greenland government in Nuuk has underlined its commitment to new ventures by repealing a law that prevented any kind of uranium mining. The laws have been amended to grant exploration licences for radioactive elements such as uranium and thorium on a case-by-case basis.
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