A Texas Oil Company Landed 300 Containers on Greenland's East Coast Without a Permit. Nuuk Says It's on Step 1 of 11.

An American oil company with ties to President Donald Trump has moved drilling equipment onto Greenland's remote eastern coast without authorization, prompting the island's government to issue what it called a strong warning.

The company is Greenland Energy, a Texas-based firm established last year and now listed on Nasdaq. Greenland's Department of Industry and Minerals said machinery was landed on the east coast last month for planned oil exploration drilling in the Jameson Land basin — roughly 300 containers of equipment — and that the company did not hold the permits required to do it. "All future logistical matters must be advised and approved by the mineral resources authority" before being carried out, the government said.

Greenland Energy has told investors the project is on track. Its executives say as much as $1 trillion in crude could lie beneath Jameson Land, and the company has committed roughly $60 million to exploratory drilling while taking a majority stake in a British firm that previously held exploration rights there. In June, the company's chairman acknowledged that a company representative had wrongly told Greenland residents that permission to land the equipment had already been granted.

The government's own accounting is considerably less advanced. Naalakkersuisut, Greenland's cabinet, published an information page showing the Jameson Land project sitting at the first of 11 steps in the exploration phase. A Greenlandic minerals official said no drilling permit could be issued before November 8 — which, in the Arctic, effectively ends the argument for this season. The Jameson Land area is protected under the Ramsar wetlands convention, which restricts drilling to the winter months, while heavy equipment can only be barged in during the summer when the fjord is ice-free. A November permit arrives after the barge window has closed and before the drilling window opens.

Authorities have not ordered the containers removed, saying that forcing removal "would not be proportionate." The company, meanwhile, has a vessel carrying additional drilling equipment expected to leave Canada in mid-September, with drilling planned for October. Greenland stopped issuing new oil exploration licenses in 2021 on environmental grounds; this project proceeds under rights granted before that decision.

The political frame is unavoidable. Greenland Energy's chairman is Larry Swets, who is understood to have access to Trump's inner circle, and its board includes a U.S. Navy veteran involved in the Golden Dome missile defense program. Swets has said the project is "not related to American annexation." Days after residents reported seeing drilling equipment come ashore, Trump posted an AI-generated image on Truth Social showing himself looking out over a Greenlandic village, captioned "Hello, Greenland!"

For a government that has spent two years insisting its resources are not for sale and its sovereignty is not negotiable, a private American company unloading equipment ahead of its permits is a test of exactly that proposition.