Arctic Metal Race Heats Up

• The U.S. and EU are racing to secure critical mineral supply chains as China dominates global mining and refining.
• Greenland has emerged as a new strategic frontier, with projects like the Tanbreez rare earth mine—valued at $3 billion—seen as key to supplying the West’s long-term demand for rare earths.
• Despite rising Arctic interest from the U.S., EU, UK, and others, analysts warn development will take years, and the region is unlikely to rival Africa or China’s established supply chains before 2035.

Critical minerals are the new oil. Everyone is after some long-term supply—except China, which has spent years building supply chains around the world to emerge as the single largest supplier and processor of those minerals. The U.S. and Europe are in a rush to catch up, and they are looking north to do that.

Earlier this month, the European Union decided it needed to start stockpiling critical minerals to avoid a shortage in case China squeezed supply. Some saw this as too little, too late, but the EU’s decision once again put in the spotlight the issue of critical mineral supply and why the West could do with some diversification.

Europe, like the U.S., is overwhelmingly dependent on imports of critical minerals essential in a range of industries. These imports, however, could be cut off, as China signaled earlier this year when it imposed export limits on certain goods amid the flare-up of trade tensions sparked by President Trump. To avoid disruption, the EU said it was going to set up a body “to buy, co-ordinate European purchases, set aside stocks and also to push companies to integrate more economic security into their supply chains”.

The United States, meanwhile, is focusing on securing its own production—in Europe, no less. While the EU devises the structure of its new centralized purchase platform, a U.S.-based company is preparing to start commercial operations at one of the largest rare earths mine in the world, Tanbreez. The deposit contains an estimated 45 million tons of rare earths, which the operator, Critical Metals, says is worth some $3 billion in net present value.

“Tanbreez is the most important mining asset of our time,” Thomas McNamara, Critical Metals’ Director of Corporate Development & Investor Relations, told Oilprice.com. “Being the largest REE/HREE [heavy rare earth elements] resources outside of China, Tanbreez is the solution to realign global supply chains to more stable, secure and safe sources. Tanbreez could supply the West nearly all their REE needs for generations,” McNamara said.

According to the company, Tanbreez could essentially become the solution to at least part of the West’s critical minerals problems. Without Tanbreez—and likely more similar projects—McNamara also said, “rerouting global REE/HREE supply chains without Tanbreez is going to be extremely challenging.

Critical Metals may be one of the first players to go to Greenland but it is very unlikely it would be the last. Suddenly, everyone is looking at Greenland for critical minerals. The UK is seeking a cooperation deal with the self-governing Danish territory, Politico reported in September. Also in September, the EU’s energy commissioner, a Danish politician, visited the world’s largest island to discuss critical mineral supply for the bloc.

“Greenland, right now, is a repository of a lot of base metals, precious metals, gem stones, rare earths, uranium … it’s all there. The problem is that up until recently, it was seen as completely unviable to actually mine them,” one associate professor in political science from the Arctic University in Norway told CNBC last week.

“But with climate change and the ability to navigate the Arctic Ocean much more frequently, especially during the summer months, Greenland is starting to be looked at much more carefully as a potential alternative source for a lot of these strategic materials to China,” Marc Lanteigne said.

Indeed, changing weather patterns in the region have made mining in Greenland a much more viable endeavor—and a very necessary one, based on the sudden interest from the UK and the EU. With no Arctic exposure of their own to speak of, both are looking at the nearest potential supplier of metals and minerals they would need for many years ahead.

Critical metals and minerals rose to media prominence as part of the net-zero transition narrative but in fact they are widely used in many other industries besides alternative energy and battery storage. Defense is one of these industries. Electronics is another. As politicians wake up to that fact, so does investor interest in places with a high concentration of such elements, such as Greenland.

Per a survey from 2023 cited by CNBC earlier this year, there are 38 different raw materials in Greenland, including rare earths, graphite, molybdenum, and tantalum, as well as titanium, uranium, and gold as well. Europe and the U.S. want a piece of all that to diversify away from China.

The big Arctic nations, meanwhile, are ramping up their local production. Both Russia and Canada are investing more in Arctic resource development, CNBC reported, and even Sweden is ramping up its exploratory work in the north, where a rare earths deposit was discovered two years ago.

It all sounds really encouraging in terms of future supply security, but the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies sounded a note of caution earlier this year. In a report focusing on the Arctic’s potential contribution to critical mineral supply in the context of the energy transition, senior research fellow Philip Andrews-Speed had the sobering message that it will take years to develop Arctic resources, and they would not come on par with the resources already being developed in Africa.

Currently, Andrews-Speed wrote, the Arctic as a whole only accounts for a tenth of just three critical minerals, and those are platinum, palladium, and nickel. After 2034, he went on, the region could see greater production in these and other minerals and metals, but this would depend on how competitive the Arctic supply would be to supplies from other parts of the world. Ultimately, according to the OIES author, “the Arctic is unlikely to make a significant contribution to the future global supply of critical minerals. This may be particularly important for Europe and North America.”

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