Kuannersuit/Kvanefjeldet The authorities’ legal defense in the Kvanefjeld case

NOAH publishes the Greenlandic and Danish authorities’ legal defense in the Kvanefjeld case

NOAH has under Greenland’s and Denmark’s Public Access to Information Acts obtained the Greenlandic and Danish authorities’ legal defense in the Kvanefjeld case. The case is currently before an arbitration court in Copenhagen that will decide whether to accept a complaint by the Australian mining company Energy Transition Minerals, ETM (in the defense named Greenland Minerals A/S, GMAS).

ETM, which is the owner of the uranium and rare earth Kvanefjeld project in Southern Greenland, is demanding approximately 10 billion EUR in compensation from the Greenlandic government - equivalent to almost four times Greenland’s annual GDP - and is at the same time trying to involve the Danish government in the proceedings.

The Danish government’s official legal adviser, Kammeradvokaten, who conducts the case on behalf of both the Greenlandic and Dansh authorities, rejects the case as without merit and states that the initiation of the arbitration case has "no other purpose than to try to put (undue) pressure on the Greenlandic government in order to grant GMAS an exploitation permit for the Kvanefjeld project, which GMAS has no legal claim to under Greenlandic law”.

The adviser expects the case to be rejected by the arbitration court, and his biggest concern is that ETM will not be able to cover the lawsuit’s large costs because the company is constructed in a way that makes it possible to predict that there will not be full coverage.

The full text of the legal defense below in Danish only