Advertisement New South Wales’ Independent Planning Commission has approved with conditions an extension to an Upper Hunter coal mine. Mangoola Coal Operations Pty Ltd, a subsidiary of Glencore Coal, sought approval to establish a new open cut mining area to the north of existing operations at its Mangoola Mine, 20 km west of Muswelbrook. An additional 52 million t of run-of-mine coal would be extracted over approximately 8 years, with operations to cease at the site in December 2030 – a 13-month extension to the company’s existing development consent. The Department of Planning, Industry, & Environment finalised its whole-of-government assessment of the Mangooal Coal Continued Operations Project in January this year, which concluded the project was “approvable, subject to comprehensive conditions”; however, the commission is the consent authority for the state significant development application because the Department received more than 50 ‘unique’ public objections to the project.