About Us - HSE

Environment Protection and Conservation Management

National Mining Company (NMC), one of MB Holding’s subsidiary companies, assigns maximum attention to work towards the protection and conservation of the environment. NMC is committed to the responsible environmental management of all of its activities to ensure that the environmental effects are either planned to be avoided or unavoidable impacts are minimised, and where possible, remediate to an acceptable standard.

Like in most companies, there are peculiarities to processing streams and mineral deposits, which require specific focus areas amongst the general environmental issues that affect any mining operation. Currently, all mining operations are based in an arid zone system. This in itself leads to challenging environmental issues without the complexities of the process streams and mining methods. NMC’s Summary Environmental Social Impact Assessment (ESIA) provides a detailed description of the project and the approaches taken with regard to environmental protection and conservation. An open consultation and communication with stakeholders, performance management, monitoring and assessment and detailed action plans ensures that the project adheres to environment laws and is environmentally acceptable to all stakeholders and sets up a benchmark for environmental performance and excellence.

Key achievements in environmental management include:

• Design and Construction of Tailings Storage Facility – this includes a HDPE lined dam, with design criteria to enable improved drainage and drying out of tailings, numerous detection system to confirm no leakage into the water table, monitoring programs and a rehabilitation program that returns the land to the useable condition

• Water Management - overall site water management in respect to control and management of run-off waters, and the conservation of water resources in an arid area has been maximized. eg process plant reuses all water from the tailings slurry though a decant and pumping system saving considerable amount of water

• Acid Mine Drainage – the development of Waste Rock Dumps in respect to any potentially acidic mine wastes, pit waters, through acid waste encapsulation storage facilities.

• Hydrocarbon Management - in respect to the prevention of spills of oily wastes or fuels to land or aquatic environments, eg establishment of workshop and waste oil spillage and storage and the re-cycling of any oily wastes or fuels.

• Integration of Environmental Management - into all aspects of our operations and business, short, medium and long term planning and closure strategies are included

• Rehabilitation Management – development an understanding of success criteria that will act as a foundation to the development of sustainability rehabilitation strategies based on robust, low risk, high probability of success methodologies to meet end land use requirements and lease relinquishment requirements at mine closure.

Key Environmental requirements for NMC are:

• To satisfy all legal obligations imposed on NMC’s activities through leases, licenses, approvals, consents or notices;

• develop environmental management plans or similar documents prior to the implementation of its various activities. All important activities are supported by procedures manuals;

• ensure all environmental documentation are closely integrated with each other and are related to occupational health and safety, emergency response, plans and site operations and procedures;

• ensure all staff are aware of their responsibilities relating to environmental management and that each employee/contractor has, and maintains, the appropriate level of competency; and

• Continually improve the Company’s environmental performance and the environmental management system itself.

NMC’s vision towards the conservation of environment

NMC vision is to achieve growth, to its full potential in the minerals industry in Oman through the discovery and evaluation of the Country's mineral resources and the sustainable and responsible development of those resources.

NMC aims to be a significant contributor to the economy and social structure of Oman, particularly rural and regional areas of the country and aims to be recognised by the community as a valued industry that is environmentally and socially responsible.