Before the Bonanza: Hydrocarbons in Greenland

Abstract

The issue of Greenlandic hydrocarbons gradually moved towards the centre of the creation of autonomous Greenland. Hydrocarbons in Greenland and the Greenlandic nation were co-produced in the same process. Thus, when hydrocarbons were connected to an ecological modernisation it allowed the newly formed Home Rule administration, in a joint Danish-Greenlandic effort, to adopt this, not only as a road to independence, but as something giving credibility to Greenland as a distinct society.