Review of potential resources for critical minerals in Greenland

Published 06-04-2017

A new report from Center for Minerals and Materials at Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) presents a review of the Greenland potential resources for undiscovered deposits of critical minerals.

Minerals are essential raw materials for the development and progress of modern society. The availability of raw materials varies from commodity to commodity, and from country to country. Some raw materials, however, are of crucial importance to the society and at the same time the supply-chain is threatened; such raw materials are defined as critical raw materials.

This report presents a review of the Greenland potential resources for undiscovered deposits of critical minerals, focusing on the raw materials labelled as critical by the European Commission in 2014.

The Greenland marginal ice-free zone makes up about 0.4 million km2, hosting complex geological terranes, that represent almost four billion years of geological history, covering the spectrum from Archaean to recent processes. This makes Greenland favourable for finding and exploiting a wide range of mineral resources including some of the critical minerals. GEUS and the Greenland Ministry of Mineral Resources (MMR) have since 2009 held annual regional mineral resource assessment workshops on selected commodities. The approach applied in these assessments constitutes the background for this review.

Example of a map in the MiMa-report. Click to enlarge photo.

^{Example of a map in the MiMa-report: Review of potential resources for critical minerals in Greenland. The map shows known graphite occurrences and tracts with potential for graphite. Click to enlarge photo.}

The review points out that some areas are likely to host high potential undiscovered mineral deposits. For example, aside from the known deposits at Kvanefjeld and Kringlerne, South Greenland has a high potential for hosting undiscovered REE deposits, for example in the Grønnedal-Ika carbonatite, the Qassiarssuk/Green Dyke, and the Ivittuut alkaline intrusion. South Greenland also has the potential for niobium occurrences and deposits in the same geological environment. Central East Greenland stands out with a high potential for tungsten and antimony. The North Atlantic Craton (Archaean) and the Palaeoproterozoic terranes have a good potential for hosting undiscovered deposits of chromium, platinum group metals and graphite.

Read the report: Review of potential resources for critical minerals in Greenland. MiMa report 2016/3, 72 pages.