Muscat – His Excellency Dr. Abdullah Bin Ali Al Amri, Chairman of the Environment Authority, issued Resolution No. 107/2023 regulating environmental permits

The regulation aims to facilitate obtaining environmental permits for projects by simplifying and improving procedures, reducing costs and complexities, while enhancing the efficiency of the issuance process for investors and companies. It ensures flexibility in environmental permit requirements that allows companies and establishments to implement innovative technology in order to achieve the highest levels of environmental performance.

It also reduces fees and fines to motivate companies to adhere to environmental and sustainability standards and to set a higher ceiling for projects that do not exceed the value of permit. Fees have been reduced to a maximum of OMR 900 for a period of 3 years with the flexibility to change, update and add new activities and projects.

It specifies procedures for obtaining environmental permits, listing important data to be included in the application for obtaining an environmental permit, including the project site, and the study of environmental impact assessment if needed, with the option of requesting any other data or documents according to the nature of the project.

In the event of a violation, one or more of the following penalties will be imposed:

• Warning and notification to rectify the situation within a specified period
• Imposing a fine
• Cancellation of the permit

Violations include failure to commit to renewing the environmental permit within ten days of its expiry date; non-compliance with creating an environmental register that contains environmental data and information; or failure to submit environmental monitoring reports within the specified period.