July 9 (Bloomberg) -- Greenland’s government may require energy companies investing in oil and gas production to capture and store carbon emissions, Joern Skov Nielsen, director of the Greenland Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum, said.

“We will ask companies to develop carbon storage technology,” Nielsen said in a telephone interview from Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, yesterday. “It’s a requirement that you use the best available technology. If carbon storage is usable around the world, they will have to use it in Greenland.”

Carbon storage projects, or the re-injection of carbon dioxide emissions created by industrial processes into underground or underwater reservoirs, are being developed from Norway to Australia. After 2012, the miners of oil-encrusted sand in northern Alberta, Canada, will have to store carbon emissions rather than release them into the atmosphere.

The semi-autonomous Danish territory, which has no operating production wells, is preparing for a new offshore licensing round next year. The U.S. Geological Survey estimated in a report in 2008 that Greenland and nearby waters may hold about 48 billion barrels of oil and gas equivalent, though some of that total is in Canadian territory.

Exxon Mobil Corp., Encana Corp., and Husky Energy Inc., among other companies, already hold exploration licenses in Greenland, according to the Bureau of Minerals and Petroleum’s latest licensing document.

Companies should expect “very harsh regulations for climate and environmental behavior,” Nielsen said. Greenlanders “suffer from climate changes. Many of our houses are built on permafrost, and as it thaws we have to reconstruct them.”

At the same time, Nielsen added, melting sea ice may make the eastern part of the country, where the richest reserves of oil and gas are believed to lie, open to exploration.

Greenland won control over most of its own affairs from Denmark, which continues to heavily subsidize its budget, in a referendum last November.

“Everyone realizes up here if we really want to make revenues that could support a self-reliant country, oil and gas is the best source of that,” Nielsen said.

To contact the reporter on this story: Matthew Campbell in London at mcampbell39@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: July 9, 2009 02:29 EDT