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$50 Oil Kills Bonanza Dream That Made Greenlanders Millionaires

Greenland, an island that may be sitting on trillions of dollars of oil, has had to acknowledge that its dream of tapping into that wealth looks increasingly far-fetched. Back when oil was headed for $150 a barrel, Greenlanders girded for a production boom after inviting in some of the world’s biggest explorers, including Chevron Corp. and Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) Now, with Brent crude dipping below $50 last week, Deputy Prime Minister Andreas Uldum says Greenland’s hope of growing rich quickly on fossil fuels was “naïve.” “I myself believed back when I was first elected” to parliament in 2009 “that billions from oil and minerals would start flowing to us the next year or the year after that,” he said in an interview in Copenhagen. “However, that’s just not the reality. I don’t know any politician in Greenland today who won’t admit to having fueled the hysteria.” The nation […]

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Greenland Targets $4 Billion in Offshore Funds to Double Its GDP

Photographer: Joe Raedle/Getty Images Greenland is looking for investors from the U.S. to Asia as the world’s largest island targets $4 billion in funds that the government predicts will allow the economy to double in size over the next decade. Investors with “the biggest risk appetite come from the east,” Business Minister Jens-Erik Kirkegaard said in a Jan. 13 phone interview from Nuuk, Greenland’s main city. “We welcome European and North American money just as much as investments coming from the Far East. We don’t have any priority.” The world’s most sparsely populated nation and home to some of the globe’s biggest untapped fossil fuel and mineral reserves says the strategy will help it win independence from Denmark , which still counts Greenland as part of its kingdom. The home rule government in Nuuk is now trying to explain the risks and political landscape to prospective investors, according to […]

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