Branan Environment consultants conducted an environmental survey of an enterprise owned by a major mining and metallurgical company in order to assess environmental risks and liabilities for insurance purposes.

The following tasks were carried out:

• Characterization of environmental conditions and historical land use of the site and surrounding areas;
• Assessment of the site’s current operations for compliance with environmental regulatory requirements of the Russian Federation in terms of potential pollution risks;
• Evaluation of current and historical activities at the site to identify potential sources of air, soil, groundwater, and surface water contamination;
• Assessment of the effectiveness of environmental risk management based on the findings of the site inspection;
• Identification and determination of the level of environmental risks associated with current and historical use of the site;
• Analysis of climate-related risks;
• Development of recommendations to improve environmental risk management and implement mitigation measures for high and critical risks;
• Description of the history of environmental losses at the site;
• Calculation of baseline parameters for subsequent insurance of the facility, including environmental damage and Maximum Foreseeable Loss (MFL) associated with business interruption, third-party civil liability, and historical pollution.

Environmental risks were considered in three key aspects:

• Historical technogenic pollution of the territory;
• Current operations of the enterprise;
• Technological man-made accidents.

An analysis was conducted of the main process components and units, their operating characteristics, technical condition, technological interconnections and interdependencies, as well as factors increasing the likelihood of risk.

When analyzing environmental risks related to man-made accidents, the most probable scenarios were identified and the corresponding potential consequences for various environmental media were determined.

The assessment of environmental risks of the company’s activities and the associated damage to the natural and social environment, performed in accordance with accepted methodological approaches, made it possible to compile a comprehensive risk register and rank risks by significance.

Taking into account information limitations and assumptions, for critically significant risks the impact zones were assessed and environmental damage and Maximum Foreseeable Losses (MFL) were calculated.