On January 15, the governor of Louisiana appeared on Fox News to discuss the fate of an autonomous European territory nearly 3,000 miles away from his home state.
“The president is serious about reinforcing the Monroe Doctrine,” Republican Gov. Jeff Landry told host Brian Kilmeade of President Donald Trump’s bellicose demands to take over Greenland. “I think this is a great opportunity for Louisiana. I think it’s a great opportunity for America. I think it’s a phenomenal opportunity for Greenlanders.”
From Venezuela to Cuba to Greenland, Trump is committed to bolstering the financial interests of US companies through imperial aggression.
When Trump appointed Landry as special envoy to Greenland a few weeks earlier—marking a significant escalation in his campaign to seize the island from the Kingdom of Denmark—the move seemed bizarre. Why is a governor, with slipping support in polls, taking on a “volunteer” job helping Trump’s campaign to control the Western Hemisphere? The Louisiana politician does not have any known expertise in global geopolitics. He has never set foot in the territory.
But in Landry there is a skeleton key to Trump’s plans. The governor is a man who can uniquely reveal the “opportunity” that Americans see from seizing the island: the extraction of Greenland’s subterranean riches.
On January 21, Trump backed off his threats to acquire Greenland through force or economic warfare, announcing on Truth Social that he’d reached a “framework of a future deal” with NATO. Negotiations are ongoing, but officials told the New York Times that the deal would potentially establish sovereign US military bases and access to mineral rights in the territory.
Landry’s appointment embodies a key philosophy that has guided Trump’s approach to foreign policy in his second term. From Venezuela to Cuba to Greenland, this administration is committed to bolstering the financial interests of US companies through imperial aggression. Political control over a foreign nation is less important than making sure Americans can profit there. It’s telling that Landry’s only plausible connection to the island is that he has done in Louisiana what American business moguls want to do in Greenland: unleash the energy industry.
A MAGA model for governance of Greenland would be similar to how Landry has treated the energy industry in his home state, actively boosting oil and gas while rolling back environmental rules. And even though Landry has publicly panned clean energy, no state is better prepared to profit from rare earth mining—spurred in large part by the global electrification surge—than Louisiana.
Here’s who stands to reap the biggest rewards from Trump’s push to take over Greenland’s resources and make the island, potentially, more like Louisiana.
The Oil
The appointment of Landry—a longtime friend to the fossil fuel industry—as Greenland envoy arrives right as American investments in the island’s oil are ramping up.
For more than 40 years, oil executives have dreamed of striking liquid gold in Jameson Land, a remote peninsula on Greenland’s eastern shore, bounded by the Arctic Ocean, glaciated peaks, and a vast, deep network of fjords. Jameson Land is thought to be home to one of the largest untapped oil reserves in the world. According to a 2007 U.S. government estimate, as many as 31 billion barrels of oil could be lying latent beneath northeast Greenland’s ice sheets.
Actually extracting that oil has proven difficult: market volatility and harsh arctic conditions have long thwarted exploration efforts. By the mid-2010s, Exxon, BP, and Shell had all surrendered their oil drilling licenses after years of prospecting. In 2021, Greenland’s government banned new oil and gas exploration licenses entirely, citing climate change concerns. (Scientists warn that Greenland’s rapidly melting glaciers and ice sheets risk fueling a dangerous rise in global sea levels.)
But there is a loophole.
In late 2025, Texas-based energy company March GL entered into a multimillion-dollar merger agreement with the firms Greenland Exploration and Pelican Acquisition. The three-way deal formed a new US company, Greenland Energy, which will go public this year.
Greenland Energy will be the only company with onshore drilling rights in Greenland. March GL’s Robert Price, who will become CEO of Greenland Energy, told the Schwab Network in November that he had recently met in Abu Dhabi with the executives of major oil and gas companies and plans to break ground on Jameson Land this summer.
Greenland Energy seems to know its fate is tied to the Trump administration. Last December, it brought on Rubenstein Public Relations, an agency with deep ties to the Trump family. The firm is run by Richard Rubenstein—son of famed PR veteran Howard J. Rubenstein, whose clients included Trump and Rupert Murdoch. Richard notes on his agency’s website that he worked with “pre-POTUS” Donald Trump for more than 15 years.
According to a press release, Rubenstein PR’s targeted campaign will amplify Greenland Energy’s “strategic role in advancing Arctic energy security.” Executive chairman Larry Swets said in a statement that “Rubenstein PR’s leadership…will help stakeholders understand the true value of what we aim to build.” (Swets, a cryptocurrency investor, is also a business partner in a different venture with billionaire Paolo Tiramani, who donated $10 million to Trump’s White House ballroom.)
Swets, Rubenstein, and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
Greenland Energy also holds a drilling and logistics contract with Halliburton, one of the US energy companies currently rushing to cash in on Trump’s ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the US seizure of the Venezuelan oil industry. Halliburton—which also has oil and gas hubs in Louisiana—most famously faced intense scrutiny for its “sweetheart deal” in Iraq, winning multibillion-dollar contracts to reconstruct the Iraqi oil sector amid the US invasion.
But the oil deals aren’t the only potential for profit. Greenland Energy acquired its oil exploration license from 80 Mile, a British resource development company that retains a 30 percent stake in the project. In addition to Jameson Land, 80 Mile holds the exclusive license for Greenland’s Disko-Nuussuaq mining project.
That is the same site where a few Silicon Valley oligarchs have sought to use artificial intelligence to extract critical minerals. Through a joint venture agreement with 80 Mile, a Bay Area startup called KoBold Metals aimed to use AI to find nickel, cobalt, and copper—crucial resources for battery-powered technology and the AI boom—in western Greenland’s Disko Island and Nuussuaq Peninsula region.
Over the past year, a series of news articles have tied Trump’s Greenland aspirations to KoBold and the aspirations of its early investors, including tech billionaires and Trump megadonors Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, and Sam Altman, as well as the venture capitalist Marc Andreessen. (Altman and Andreessen have also invested in billionaire Peter Thiel’s effort to create a cryptocurrency-backed zone of corporate deregulation in Greenland.)
But, if you will follow me through some complex shell company trades, it’s more interesting than it may appear.
Recent reporting has largely missed that KoBold in fact sold its Greenland interests back to 80 Mile last May, though it will continue to receive royalties from the project. Six months later, a Colorado-based shell company called USFM Corporation took a 51 percent stake in 80 Mile’s Disko-Nuussuaq project. State business records show that this company, USFM, was created by Greenland Energy’s Robert Price. (80 Mile and March GL did not respond to requests for comment.)
That means that a Greenland Energy executive—who would profit from the oil drilling—also has a major stake in a Greenland critical minerals mine and would profit from that, too.
Price and Swets, the men behind Greenland Energy, have insisted their effort is unrelated to Trump’s push to annex Greenland. Indeed, with some of the few grandfathered licenses, their plan to drill for oil in Jameson Land can move forward regardless of geopolitical negotiations. But a MAGA takeover of the region would undeniably bode well for their interests writ large, especially if Landry’s deregulatory approach in Louisiana serves as a model for future governance.
As Louisiana Attorney General, Landry called climate change a “hoax” and fought vigorously against President Joe Biden’s Environmental Protection Agency, suing the administration over policies that aimed to limit oil leases on public lands and curb pollution in the petroleum industry-dense strip of Louisiana known as Cancer Alley. While he pursued fossil fuel-friendly litigation, Landry served as a paid board member for the oil services company Harvey Gulf International, flouting a Louisiana statute that bars the state attorney from engaging in private legal work. And he hired Harvey Gulf CEO Shane Guidry, one of his major political donors, to serve as a “special agent/investigator” in the AG’s office. (Landry’s office did not respond to a request for comment.)
Landry stepped down from the Harvey Gulf board in 2023 after he announced his bid for governor. But his support for expanding and deregulating the oil and gas industry has continued. In 2024, Landry launched the Governors Coalition for Energy Security to fight emissions standards and environmental permitting rules, recruiting fellow Republican governors and right-wing Canadian officials to his cause. Last year, under Landry’s governorship, Louisiana adopted language from a conservative think tank to redefine natural gas as “green energy” akin to solar and wind. On January 22, Landry announced a “Whole-of-Louisiana Energy Strategy” that includes a dictate to “drill, baby, drill.”
And Guidry has remained a close Landry confidant, recently offering several statements to The Times-Picayune about his friend’s new role as Greenland’s special envoy. The exact contours of the governor’s job were unclear, Guidry said in December, “but when the president calls, you try to help him.”
The Minerals
If Trump does manage to boost mining in Greenland, there are only a few US facilities that could actually refine the materials. But one US state in particular is quietly building out its mineral processing capabilities alongside its petroleum infrastructure: Louisiana.
In addition to “drill, baby, drill,” Landry’s new state energy strategy highlights the importance of “Louisiana’s emergence as a leader in next-generation strategic materials,” with several recent public and private investments in the state and a string of major facilities under construction. Most notably, Critical Metals has a long-term agreement to supply rare earth minerals from its Greenland mine to the Ucore Rare Metals processing facility in Alexandria, Louisiana. That facility has received more than $22 million in funding from the US Department of Defense since 2022.
Syrah Resources, the only US supplier that refines graphite for industrial use, announced last year that it would expand its Vidalia, Louisiana, plant through a $165 million Inflation Reduction Act tax credit. While Syrah currently sources its graphite from Mozambique, Greenland has one of the highest-grade graphite deposits in the world. Meanwhile, Aclara Resources announced in October that it would invest $277 million to build America’s first heavy rare earth separation facility in Vinton, Louisiana. And one week before Landry’s appointment as special envoy to Greenland, Louisiana announced that ElementUSA would invest $850 million to build a rare earth and critical minerals refining facility in the state. ElementUSA has also received nearly $30 million in DOD funding for gallium and scandium production.
The Trump administration is reportedly eyeing direct investments in companies mining for rare earth resources in Greenland, including Amaroq and Critical Metals Corp. Last January, the New York Times reported that Trump’s commerce secretary Howard Lutnick had a direct financial stake in Critical Metals via his investment firm.
The DOD has also invested $150 million in the Atlantic Alumina Company (ATALCO), which announced this month that it will be expanding its Gramercy, Louisiana, refinery to become America’s first large-scale gallium production facility. ATALCO plans to extract gallium, used to make semiconductor chips and defense tech, on-site, but it’s worth noting that gallium is one of a handful of key resources that Amaroq is mining in Greenland.
Still, while Landry’s home state is well-positioned to profit from a Greenland mining boom, the governor himself has been off to a rocky start as special envoy. Largely absent from the spotlight amid rapidly evolving diplomatic efforts, he’s faced ire from Greenlanders and skepticism at home for his claim that he’ll win the hearts of Greenlanders using “culinary diplomacy.”
“If you bring them some crawfish and you start talking Cajun to them, I don’t think they’ll give you the country,” Landry’s mentor and retired Louisiana state senator Fred Mills told the Los Angeles Times, “but they’re going to like you.”
They apparently do not. Three days after Landry praised Trump’s Greenland gambit on Fox News, the Greenland Dog Sledding Association announced the governor had been disinvited from the race. On January 28, Landry said he plans to visit Greenland anyway and remains “on call” as envoy. He still hasn’t set a date for his trip, but he reiterated that the island has “tremendous opportunities.”
“It will benefit every[one],” he added, “to explore those opportunities.”
This post has been syndicated from Mother Jones, where it was published under this address.