President Donald Trump‘s desire to buy Greenland sounded like a geopolitical punchline, at first. After all, Denmark still oversees the island’s foreign affairs and defense. Then Trump’s comments became a hard-line policy, one that makes Greenlanders uneasy.
Under the island’s vast ice sheet lies what some geologists say is one of the world’s largest undeveloped petroleum systems. And in an era of fragile oil supply chains and geopolitical chokepoints, that kind of resource potential suddenly looks less eccentric—and far more strategic.
The global oil market remains heavily dependent on a handful of fragile transit routes, most notably the Strait of Hormuz, where roughly one-fifth of global seaborne crude passes each day. As volatility ripples through the oil market, investors often track the sector through funds like the Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund, the United States Oil Fund, and the SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF, which tend to move quickly when supply risks push crude prices higher.
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Robert Price, CEO of March GL and incoming chief of Greenland Energy Company, argues that such chokepoints expose a deeper structural problem.
“Markets react to headlines, but they often underestimate how fragile global energy flows really are,” Price said. Western economies remain deeply dependent on politically volatile regions for oil supply, he added—making new reserves in stable jurisdictions increasingly valuable.
That’s where Greenland, perhaps to its dismay, enters the conversation.
According to Price, the Jameson Land Basin in eastern Greenland could hold roughly 13 billion barrels of oil resource potential, based on independent geological evaluations. If even a fraction of that estimate proves recoverable, it would rank among the largest undeveloped onshore petroleum systems in the Arctic.
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Price says the basin stands out not just for its size, but for how much groundwork has already been done.
More than $275 million in historical exploration and seismic studies have mapped the region, identifying over 50 potential drilling targets. The basin also shows natural oil and gas seeps with biomarker signatures similar to those found in prolific fields in the Norwegian sector of the North Sea.
