Copenhagen (AFP) – A US energy exploration company has sparked an outcry by unloading drilling equipment without authorisation on the east coast of Greenland, the autonomous Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump.

Texas-based Greenland Energy, which insists it has no connection to the US president's territorial ambitions, maintains that it was merely taking a preliminary step toward exploration activities when it unloaded the gear last month in Nunap Qeqqa, also known as Jameson Land.

Greenland Energy did not respond to an AFP request for comment, but it told Danish media in July that it believed that authorisation to unload and store its equipment, which was located in another part of Greenland, was only required within the oil exploration licence area.

"It was a mistake on our part, a mistake that will not be repeated," its managing director Roderick McIllree told Danish public broadcaster DR in late July.

The equipment is currently stored in a hangar at Nerlerit Inaat Airport, near the village of Ittoqqortoormiit, the closest settlement to the licence area.

The company has received a "strong warning" from the Greenland government, which in a statement last month added "that all future logistical arrangements must be notified to and approved by the mineral resources authority before they are carried out".

Greenland Energy's chairman, Larry Swets, has been described as being close to Trump.

And at a time when the US president still wishes to control the vast Arctic island, the prospect of a US energy company potentially carrying out exploration activities is making people uneasy.

"There is this vague sense of a connection to Trump," Ulrik Pram Gad, a researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies, told AFP.

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