Trump’s Greenland envoy claims country could export oil in 10 months, despite no current production
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, serving as President Trump’s special envoy to Greenland, said in a Fox News interview Friday that the Danish territory’s untapped oil reserves could ease global energy prices, following a three-day trip to the island. Asked by host Charlie Hurt about the island’s resources, Landry said: “Greenland could be exporting 2 million barrels of oil a day right now. Think about what that could mean. Think about what kind of pressure that would relieve in the Strait of Hormuz.”
He said production could be running “within 10 months or so” and credited Trump as “the only president in the last 30 or 40 years to actually care about doing something and putting Greenland on the map.”
Landry, who is also governor of Louisiana, made the trip as part of his special envoy role, saying Trump had told him to “go there and make a bunch of friends.”
The numbers are hard to square with conditions on the ground. Greenland has no oil production, no pipeline or export infrastructure and no commercial barrel has ever been pumped from the island. The only active prospect is the Jameson Land basin in East Greenland, where a U.S.-listed firm and its British partner plan to drill two exploratory wells in the second half of 2026—the first wells ever sunk in the basin, aimed simply at testing whether the oil is there. Even if those wells strike, production would be years away, leaving Landry’s “right now” and “10 months” timelines looking far-fetched.
The reception on the island was also far cooler than the envoy’s account suggested. The opening of a new U.S. consulate in Nuuk that same week drew several hundred demonstrators chanting “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders,” while Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen and other officials declined to attend. Nielsen has maintained that the island is not for sale and that Greenlanders have the right to self-determination.
