The Greenland Sea is a body of water that borders

Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland is t ...

to the west, the

Svalbard Svalbard ( , ), also known as Spitsbergen, or Spitzbergen, is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. North of mainland Europe, it is about midway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. The islands of the group range ...

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered islands. Examples of archipelagos include: the Indonesian Archi ...

to the east,

Fram Strait The Fram Strait is the passage between Greenland and Svalbard, located roughly between 77°N and 81°N latitudes and centered on the prime meridian. The Greenland and Norwegian Seas lie south of Fram Strait, while the Nansen Basin of the Arcti ...

and the

Arctic Ocean The Arctic Ocean is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceans. It spans an area of approximately and is known as the coldest of all the oceans. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) recognizes it as an ocean, a ...

to the north, and the

Norwegian Sea The Norwegian Sea ( no, Norskehavet; is, Noregshaf; fo, Norskahavið) is a marginal sea, grouped with either the Atlantic Ocean or the Arctic Ocean, northwest of Norway between the North Sea and the Greenland Sea, adjoining the Barents Sea to ...

and

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

to the south. The Greenland Sea is often defined as part of the

, sometimes as part of the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

. However, definitions of the Arctic Ocean and its seas tend to be imprecise or arbitrary. In general usage the term "Arctic Ocean" would exclude the Greenland Sea. In oceanographic studies the Greenland Sea is considered part of the

Nordic Seas The Nordic Seas are located north of Iceland and south of Svalbard. They have also been defined as the region located north of the Greenland-Scotland Ridge and south of the Fram Strait-Spitsbergen-Norway intersection. Known to connect the North Pa ...

, along with the

. The Nordic Seas are the main connection between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans and, as such, could be of great significance in a possible

shutdown of thermohaline circulation The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is part of a global thermohaline circulation in the oceans and is the zonally integrated component of surface and deep currents in the Atlantic Ocean. It is characterized by a northward fl ...

. In oceanography the Arctic Ocean and Nordic Seas are often referred to collectively as the "Arctic Mediterranean Sea", a

marginal sea This is a list of seas of the World Ocean, including marginal seas, areas of water, various gulfs, bights, bays, and straits. Terminology * Ocean – the four to seven largest named bodies of water in the World Ocean, all of which have "Ocean ...

of the Atlantic. The sea has

Arctic climate The climate of the Arctic is characterized by long, cold winters and short, cool summers. There is a large amount of variability in climate across the Arctic, but all regions experience extremes of solar radiation in both summer and winter. Som ...

with regular northern winds and temperatures rarely rising above . It previously contained the Odden ice tongue (or Odden) area, which extended eastward from the main East Greenland

ice Ice is water frozen into a solid state, typically forming at or below temperatures of 0 degrees Celsius or Depending on the presence of impurities such as particles of soil or bubbles of air, it can appear transparent or a more or less opaq ...

edge in the vicinity of 72– 74°N during the winter and acted as a key winter ice formation area in the Arctic. The

West Ice The West Ice is a patch of the Greenland Sea covered by pack ice during winter time. It is located north of Iceland, between Greenland and Jan Mayen island. The West Ice is a major breeding ground for seals, especially harp seals and hooded ...

forms in winter in the Greenland Sea, north of Iceland, between Greenland and

Jan Mayen Jan Mayen () is a Norwegian volcanic island in the Arctic Ocean with no permanent population. It is long (southwest-northeast) and in area, partly covered by glaciers (an area of around the Beerenberg volcano). It has two parts: larger nort ...

island. It is a major breeding ground of

harp seal The harp seal (''Pagophilus groenlandicus''), also known as Saddleback Seal or Greenland Seal, is a species of earless seal, or true seal, native to the northernmost Atlantic Ocean and Arctic Ocean. Originally in the genus ''Phoca'' with a number ...

and

hooded seal The hooded seal (''Cystophora cristata'') is a large phocid found only in the central and western North Atlantic, ranging from Svalbard in the east to the Gulf of St. Lawrence in the west. The seals are typically silver-grey or white in color, w ...

that has been used for seal hunting for more than 200 years.

Extent

The

International Hydrographic Organization The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) is an intergovernmental organisation representing hydrography. , the IHO comprised 98 Member States. A principal aim of the IHO is to ensure that the world's seas, oceans and navigable waters a ...

defines the limits of the Greenland Sea as follows:

''On the North.'' A line joining the Northernmost point of Spitzbergen [
Svalbard Svalbard ( , ), also known as Spitsbergen, or Spitzbergen, is a Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. North of mainland Europe, it is about midway between the northern coast of Norway and the North Pole. The islands of the group range ...
] to the Northernmost point of
Greenland Greenland ( kl, Kalaallit Nunaat, ; da, Grønland, ) is an island country in North America that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is located between the Arctic and Atlantic oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Greenland is t ...
. ''On the East.'' The West coast of West Spitzbergen sland_of_Spitsbergen.html" ;"title="Spitsbergen.html" ;"title="sland of Spitsbergen">sland of Spitsbergen">Spitsbergen.html" ;"title="sland of Spitsbergen">sland of Spitsbergen/nowiki>. ''On the Southeast.'' A line joining the Southernmost point of West Spitzbergen to the Northern point of
Jan Mayen Jan Mayen () is a Norwegian volcanic island in the Arctic Ocean with no permanent population. It is long (southwest-northeast) and in area, partly covered by glaciers (an area of around the Beerenberg volcano). It has two parts: larger nort ...
Island, down the West coast of that island to its Southern extreme, thence a Line to the Eastern extreme of Gerpir (67°05′N, 13°30′W) [''sic'', actually at ] in
Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...
. ''On the Southwest.'' A line joining Straumnes (NW extreme of Iceland) to
Cape Nansen Cape Nansen ( da, Kap Nansen) is a headland in the Greenland Sea, east Greenland, Sermersooq municipality. This cape is named after Fridtjof Nansen. Cape Nansen is an important geographical landmark. Geography Cape Nansen is located to the northe ...
() in Greenland. ''On the West.'' The East and Northeast coast of Greenland between Cape Nansen and the northernmost point.

History

While the sea has been known for millennia, the first scientific investigations were carried out in 1876–1878 as part of the Norwegian North-Atlantic Expedition. Since then, many countries, mostly Norway, Iceland and Russia have sent scientific expeditions to the area. The complex water current system in the Greenland Sea was described in 1909 by Fridtjof Nansen. The Greenland Sea was a popular hunting ground for the

whaling Whaling is the process of hunting of whales for their usable products such as meat and blubber, which can be turned into a type of oil that became increasingly important in the Industrial Revolution. It was practiced as an organized industry ...

industry for 300 years, until 1911, primarily based in

Spitsbergen Spitsbergen (; formerly known as West Spitsbergen; Norwegian: ''Vest Spitsbergen'' or ''Vestspitsbergen'' , also sometimes spelled Spitzbergen) is the largest and the only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in northern Norw ...

. At that point, the formerly rich whale population here, was so depleted that the industry was no longer profitable. The remaining whales of the Greenland Sea has been protected ever since, but the populations have not shown any proof of significant regeneration. Since the late 1990s, polar biologists reports an increase in the local bowhead whale population and in 2015, arctic scientists discovered a surprising abundance of them in a small area. These results may be interpreted as an early sign of a beginning recovery for this particular species, that once formed the largest bowhead population in the world, at an estimated 52,000 whales. The

Inuit Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...

hunted whales on a non-industrial scale in the Greenland Sea since the 15th century, as evidenced by archaeology. The first complete man-powered crossing of the Greenland Sea was achieved in 2017 by rowing expedition, Polar Row led by

Fiann Paul Fiann Paul (born 15 August 1980) is an Icelandic explorer, athlete, artist, speaker and Jungian psychoanalyst. He is the world's most record-breaking explorer, and holds the world's highest number of performance-based Guinness World Records ev ...

Geography and geology

The Greenland Sea is bounded to the west by the island of

, and to the south by the

Denmark Strait The Denmark Strait () or Greenland Strait ( , 'Greenland Sound') is an oceanic strait between Greenland to its northwest and Iceland to its southeast. The Norwegian island of Jan Mayen lies northeast of the strait. Geography The strait connect ...

and

. To the southeast, behind the

island (Norway) lies the vast expanse of the

, of which Greenland Sea may be considered an extension. Across the

to the northeast, the sea is delimited by the

(Norway). The southern part of the Greenland Sea, roughly the area south of the Jan Mayen Francture Zone or the line

Cape Brewster Cape Brewster ( da, Kap Brewster; kl, Kangikajik, meaning 'the bad cape') is a headland in the Greenland Sea, east Greenland, Sermersooq municipalities of Greenland, municipality. History This headland was named Cape Brewster by William Scoresby ...

– Jan Mayen is sometimes referred to as Iceland Sea. The bottom of the Greenland Sea is a depression bounded to the south by the underwater Greenland-Iceland ridge and to the east by the

Mohns Ridge Mohns is the surname of: *Arthur Mohns (1896-?), German footballer *Doug Mohns (born 1933), Canadian retired National Hockey League player * Greg Mohns (1950-2012), executive and coach in the Canadian Football League *Lloyd Mohns (1921-2005), Cana ...

and

Knipovich Ridge Nikolai Mikhailovich Knipovich (also Knipowitsch) (6 April ld Style and New Style dates, O.S. 25 March1862 – 23 February 1939) was a Russian and Soviet ichthyology, ichthyologist, marine zoology, marine zoologist and oceanography, oceanogra ...

(parts of the

Mid-Atlantic Ridge The Mid-Atlantic Ridge is a mid-ocean ridge (a divergent or constructive plate boundary) located along the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, and part of the longest mountain range in the world. In the North Atlantic, the ridge separates the North Ame ...

). To the west, the bottom rises first slowly, but then rapidly toward the wide Greenland coastal strip.

Silt Silt is granular material of a size between sand and clay and composed mostly of broken grains of quartz. Silt may occur as a soil (often mixed with sand or clay) or as sediment mixed in suspension with water. Silt usually has a floury feel when ...

s fill the submarine hollows and gorges; silty sands, gravel, boulders, and other products of erosion coat the shelves and ridges. Although the deepest point inside of the sea is , depths down to have been measured in the Molloy Deep of the

which connects the sea to the Arctic Ocean on the north. The Greenland ice sheet reaches down to the sea at

Jokel Bay Jokel Bay ( da, Jøkelbugten) is a large bay in North Eastern Greenland. The area of the bay is uninhabited. Administratively Jokel Bay and its surroundings belong to the Northeast Greenland National Park. The bay was named after an old Norse wor ...

. Major islands of the Greenland Sea include the

archipelago,

as well as coastal islands off the NE Greenland shores, such as Hovgaard, Ella, Godfred Hansen,

Île-de-France , timezone1 = CET , utc_offset1 = +01:00 , timezone1_DST = CEST , utc_offset1_DST = +02:00 , blank_name_sec1 = Gross regional product , blank_info_sec1 = Ranked 1st , bla ...

, Lynn, Norske,

Gamma Gamma (uppercase , lowercase ; ''gámma'') is the third letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 3. In Ancient Greek, the letter gamma represented a voiced velar stop . In Modern Greek, this letter re ...

and

Schnauder The Schnauder is a river of Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia in Germany. It is a right tributary of the White Elster, which it joins near Groitzsch. See also * List of rivers of Saxony *List of rivers of Saxony-Anhalt A list of rivers of S ...

islands. Of those, only the Svalbard islands are inhabited, and Jan Mayen has only temporal military staff. After the

League of Nations The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference that ...

gave Norway jurisdiction over the island, in 1921 Norway opened the first meteorological station there, which was a subject of contention between Germany and United Kingdom during World War II.Rigge, Simon (1980), ''War in the Outposts'', pp. 24–25. Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books, . Several radio and meteorological stations operate on the island nowadays.

Hydrology, climate, and ice

The climate is

Arctic The Arctic ( or ) is a polar regions of Earth, polar region located at the northernmost part of Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean, adjacent seas, and parts of Canada (Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut), Danish Realm (Greenla ...

and varies significantly across the vast sea area. Air temperatures fluctuate between near

in winter and off Greenland in summer. Averages are in the south and in the north in February, which is the coldest month. The corresponding values for the warmest month, August, are in the south and in the north. The summer is very short: The number of days per year when the temperature rises above varies between 225 in the north to 334 in the south. The annual precipitation is in the north, but in the south. Northern winds continue through the whole year, cooling the surface water and bringing ice to the south. The average surface water temperature is about or lower in the north and in the south; the corresponding summer temperatures are about respectively. The bottom water temperatures are below . The surface water salinity is 3.30–3.45% in the eastern and below 3.20% in the western parts, increasing to 3.49% toward the bottom. The water is green.

Tide Tides are the rise and fall of sea levels caused by the combined effects of the gravity, gravitational forces exerted by the Moon (and to a much lesser extent, the Sun) and are also caused by the Earth and Moon orbiting one another. Tide t ...

s are semidiurnal with the average height of . Together with the water currents, they break up the floating ice sheets and mix various water layers both laterally and along the depth. The progressively colder waters of

North Atlantic Current The North Atlantic Current (NAC), also known as North Atlantic Drift and North Atlantic Sea Movement, is a powerful warm western boundary current within the Atlantic Ocean that extends the Gulf Stream northeastward. The NAC originates from wher ...

sink in the Arctic Ocean, returning south in the form of cold

East Greenland Current The East Greenland Current (EGC) is a cold, low- salinity current that extends from Fram Strait (~80N) to Cape Farewell (~60N). The current is located off the eastern coast of Greenland along the Greenland continental margin. The current cuts t ...

, an important part of the Atlantic conveyor belt, which flows along the western part of the sea. Along the eastern part flows the warm Spitsbergen Current, a part of

Gulf Stream The Gulf Stream, together with its northern extension the North Atlantic Current, North Atlantic Drift, is a warm and swift Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic ocean current that originates in the Gulf of Mexico and flows through the Straits of Florida a ...

. Mixtures of cold, freshwater ice melt and the warm, salty Spitsbergen Current may experience

cabbeling Cabbeling is when two separate water parcels mix to form a third which sinks below both parents. The combined water parcel is denser than the original two water parcels. The two parent water parcels may have the same density, but they have diff ...

, which might contribute to thermohaline circulation. The combination of those currents creates a counter-clockwise water flow in the central part of the sea. Because of frequent fogs, winds, and currents, which continuously transport ice and icebergs through the Greenland Sea to the south, the Greenland Sea has a narrow window for commercial navigation: The ice season starts in October and ends in August. Three types of floating ice are distinguished: Arctic pack ice (several meters thick), sea ice (about a meter thick), and freshwater icebergs.

West Ice

In winter, a large area north of Iceland between

and

, called

, is covered by continuous ice. It is a major breeding ground for seals, including

, and

gray seal The grey seal (''Halichoerus grypus'') is found on both shores of the North Atlantic Ocean. In Latin Halichoerus grypus means "hook-nosed sea pig". It is a large seal of the family Phocidae, which are commonly referred to as "true seals" or " ...

. It was discovered in the early 18th century by British whalers and since late 1750s was used for seal hunting. The hunting was especially intensive in the 19th century, but declined in the 20th century because of hunting restrictions and lower market demand. Around 5 April 1952, a major storm resulted in disappearance of ships with 79 Norwegian seal hunters on board. Seven other Norwegian seal hunting vessels shipwrecked the same month.

Odden ice tongue

The Odden ice tongue or simply the Odden (Odden is

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

word for ''headland'') was a key winter ice formation area in the Arctic. It was known for a long time and was encountered by Fridtjof Nansen but was only fully understood with the advent of satellite imagery. The Odden had a length of about and covered an area of up to in most years. It extended eastward from the main East Greenland ice edge in the vicinity of 72–74°N during the winter because of the presence of very cold polar surface water in the

Jan Mayen Current Jan, JaN or JAN may refer to: Acronyms * Jackson, Mississippi (Amtrak station), US, Amtrak station code JAN * Jackson-Evers International Airport, Mississippi, US, IATA code * Jabhat al-Nusra (JaN), a Syrian militant group * Japanese Article Numb ...

, which diverts some water eastward from the

at that latitude. Most of the already formed ice continued floating south, driven by the wind, so a cold open water surface was exposed on which new ice formed as

frazil ice Frazil ice is a collection of loose, randomly oriented ice crystals millimeter and sub-millimeter in size, with various shapes, e.g. elliptical disks, dendrites, needles and of an irregular nature. Frazil ice forms during the winter in open-wate ...

and

pancake ice Pancake ice is a form of sea ice that consists of round pieces of ice with diameters ranging from 30 centimetres (12 in) to 3 metres (9.8 ft) and thicknesses up to 10 centimetres (3.9 inches), depending on the local conditions. It forms as a res ...

in the rough seas, producing a giant tongue shape. The salt rejected back into the ocean from this ice formation caused the surface water to become denser and sink, sometimes to great depths ( or more), making this one of the few regions of the ocean where winter convection occurred, which helped drive the entire worldwide system of surface and deep currents known as the

thermohaline circulation Thermohaline circulation (THC) is a part of the large-scale ocean circulation that is driven by global density gradients created by surface heat and freshwater fluxes. The adjective ''thermohaline'' derives from '' thermo-'' referring to temp ...

. Since the 1990s, the Odden ice tongue rarely develops.

Fauna

The Greenland Sea is densely inhabited by the organisms that form the base of the oceanic

food chain A food chain is a linear network of links in a food web starting from producer organisms (such as grass or algae which produce their own food via photosynthesis) and ending at an apex predator species (like grizzly bears or killer whales), det ...

. Large

invertebrate Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...

fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of li ...

(such as

cod Cod is the common name for the demersal fish genus '' Gadus'', belonging to the family Gadidae. Cod is also used as part of the common name for a number of other fish species, and one species that belongs to genus ''Gadus'' is commonly not call ...

herring Herring are forage fish, mostly belonging to the family of Clupeidae. Herring often move in large schools around fishing banks and near the coast, found particularly in shallow, temperate waters of the North Pacific and North Atlantic Oceans, i ...

redfish Redfish is a common name for several species of fish. It is most commonly applied to certain deep-sea rockfish in the genus ''Sebastes'', red drum from the genus '' Sciaenops'' or the reef dwelling snappers in the genus '' Lutjanus''. It is also a ...

halibut Halibut is the common name for three flatfish in the genera '' Hippoglossus'' and ''Reinhardtius'' from the family of right-eye flounders and, in some regions, and less commonly, other species of large flatfish. The word is derived from ''h ...

, and

plaice Plaice is a common name for a group of flatfish that comprises four species: the European, American, Alaskan and scale-eye plaice. Commercially, the most important plaice is the European. The principal commercial flatfish in Europe, it is al ...

), birds, and

mammal Mammals () are a group of vertebrate animals constituting the class Mammalia (), characterized by the presence of mammary glands which in females produce milk for feeding (nursing) their young, a neocortex (a region of the brain), fur or ...

s (including various species of

seals Seals may refer to: * Pinniped, a diverse group of semi-aquatic marine mammals, many of which are commonly called seals, particularly: ** Earless seal, or "true seal" ** Fur seal * Seal (emblem), a device to impress an emblem, used as a means of a ...

whale Whales are a widely distributed and diverse group of fully aquatic placental marine mammals. As an informal and colloquial grouping, they correspond to large members of the infraorder Cetacea, i.e. all cetaceans apart from dolphins and ...

s, and

dolphin A dolphin is an aquatic mammal within the infraorder Cetacea. Dolphin species belong to the families Delphinidae (the oceanic dolphins), Platanistidae (the Indian river dolphins), Iniidae (the New World river dolphins), Pontoporiidae (the ...

s) all feed on the smaller invertebrates and small

organism In biology, an organism () is any living system that functions as an individual entity. All organisms are composed of cells (cell theory). Organisms are classified by taxonomy into groups such as multicellular animals, plants, and ...

s. Mosses, lichens, and scanty bushes around the coasts serve as food to the deer and

musk ox Musk (Persian: مشک, ''Mushk'') is a class of aromatic substances commonly used as base notes in perfumery. They include glandular secretions from animals such as the musk deer, numerous plants emitting similar fragrances, and artificial sub ...

en, which in turn are hunted by the

polar bear The polar bear (''Ursus maritimus'') is a hypercarnivorous bear whose native range lies largely within the Arctic Circle, encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses. It is the largest extant bear specie ...

. The Greenland Sea was formerly home to a large population of various whale species, especially

bowhead whales The bowhead whale (''Balaena mysticetus'') is a species of baleen whale belonging to the family Balaenidae and the only living representative of the genus ''Balaena''. They are the only baleen whale endemic to the Arctic and subarctic waters, an ...

, but the whaling industry decimated them greatly from the beginning of the 1600s till 1911. In the last few decades there have been a few signs indicating a beginning recovery.

Oil and gas

US Geological Survey The United States Geological Survey (USGS), formerly simply known as the Geological Survey, is a scientific agency of the United States government. The scientists of the USGS study the landscape of the United States, its natural resources, an ...

has estimated that at least 13% of the world's undiscovered oil deposits and 30% of the world's undiscovered gas pockets are located in the Arctic, with the Greenland Sea potentially holding large amounts of

natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbo ...

and lesser amounts of

natural gas liquids Natural-gas condensate, also called natural gas liquids, is a low-density mixture of hydrocarbon liquids that are present as gaseous components in the raw natural gas produced from many natural gas fields. Some gas species within the raw natur ...

and

crude oil Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crude ...

. This has led the Greenland's minister and provincial council to offer a large number of off-shore concessions to potential hydrocarbon (oil and gas) extraction. The majority of the concessions are located in seas west of Greenland (primarily the

Davis Strait Davis Strait is a northern arm of the Atlantic Ocean that lies north of the Labrador Sea. It lies between mid-western Greenland and Baffin Island in Nunavut, Canada. To the north is Baffin Bay. The strait was named for the English explorer Jo ...

and

Baffin Bay Baffin Bay ( Inuktitut: ''Saknirutiak Imanga''; kl, Avannaata Imaa; french: Baie de Baffin), located between Baffin Island and the west coast of Greenland, is defined by the International Hydrographic Organization as a marginal sea of the Arct ...

), but with 19 concessions in the Greenland Sea. In late 2013, a total of three

consortia A consortium (plural: consortia) is an association of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments (or any combination of these entities) with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for ...

obtained hydrocarbon extraction rights to four large areas of the Greenland Sea from the Greenland Bureau of Mineral and Petroleum. The consortia are led by the oil companies of Statoil,

Chevron Chevron (often relating to V-shaped patterns) may refer to: Science and technology * Chevron (aerospace), sawtooth patterns on some jet engines * Chevron (anatomy), a bone * '' Eulithis testata'', a moth * Chevron (geology), a fold in rock ...

, and Eni, but includes several other smaller companies such as

Shell Shell may refer to: Architecture and design * Shell (structure), a thin structure ** Concrete shell, a thin shell of concrete, usually with no interior columns or exterior buttresses ** Thin-shell structure Science Biology * Seashell, a hard o ...

, British Petroleum, DONG Energy and Nunaoil. Since then, a fifth hydrocarbon concession has been sold. Exxon Mobil, the largest oil company in the world and with a lot of experience in the Arctic, was also applying for oil extraction rights in the Greenland Sea initially, but pulled out in December 2013 for unexplained reasons, concentrating efforts on

shale gas Shale gas is an unconventional natural gas that is found trapped within shale formations. Since the 1990s a combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing has made large volumes of shale gas more economical to produce, and some ...

and the American market instead. Drilling for oil in deep waters in an ice-filled Arctic environment is a potential new undertaking for the oil industry, and poses many risks and dangers. Because of these difficulties, the Greenland Minister Council expects the first exploratory drills to take place no sooner than the mid 2020s. They estimate that a full preliminary program with seismic surveys, exploratory drills, and proper safety measures will take about 16 years and an investment of about

US$ The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

500 million in each concession.