The Norwegian Directorate of Mining with the Commissioner of Mines at Svalbard is a Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

 government agency

Government agency

A government or state agency is a permanent or semi-permanent organization in the machinery of government that is responsible for the oversight and administration of specific functions, such as an intelligence agency. There is a notable variety of agency types...

 responsible for administrating the extraction of mineral resources

Mining

Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the earth, from an ore body, vein or seam. The term also includes the removal of soil. Materials recovered by mining include base metals, precious metals, iron, uranium, coal, diamonds, limestone, oil shale, rock...

 within the kingdom. The directorate is subordinate the Ministry of Trade and Industry

Norwegian Ministry of Trade and Industry

The Royal Norwegian Ministry of Trade and Industry is a Norwegian ministry responsible for business, trade and industry. It is led by Trond Giske . The department must report to the legislature, Storting.-History:The Norwegian Ministry of Trade, Shipping, Industry, Craft and Fisheries was created...

 and co-located with the Norwegian Geological Survey

Norwegian Geological Survey

Norwegian Geological Survey , abbr:NGU is a Norwegian government agency responsible for geologic mapping and research. The agency is located in Trondheim with an office in Tromsø, with about 225 employees...

 in Trondheim

Trondheim

Trondheim , historically, Nidaros and Trondhjem, is a city and municipality in Sør-Trøndelag county, Norway. With a population of 173,486, it is the third most populous municipality and city in the country, although the fourth largest metropolitan area. It is the administrative centre of...

, with a separate office in Longyearbyen

Longyearbyen

Longyearbyen is the largest settlement and the administrative centre of Svalbard, Norway. It is located on the western coast of Spitsbergen, the largest island of the Svalbard archipelago, on the southern side on Adventfjorden , which continues inland with Adventdalen...

.

A total of 18 employees see to the administration of mining legislation, registering claims

Mineral rights

- Mineral estate :Ownership of mineral rights is an estate in real property. Technically it is known as a mineral estate and often referred to as mineral rights...

, approving mine plans and supervising the extractive industry. It is also the supervisory authority concerning environmental impact assessment

Environmental impact assessment

An environmental impact assessment is an assessment of the possible positive or negative impact that a proposed project may have on the environment, together consisting of the natural, social and economic aspects....

for planned extraction.

History

The directorate was created in 1986 when the five mining authority districts were merged into one agency. This process was concluded in 1994. From 2003 the Commission er Mines at Svalbard was merged into the directorate.