The British, after surveying the mountain and sending samples to be tested in London in the summer of 1947, decided that it should be mined for gypsum. The Holloway Brothers were commissioned to oversee operations and to set up a mine railway to Umm Bab. A small labor camp was also established in the area. As much as 75 tons of gypsum had been quarried from the mountain by July 1948. The contract was later handed off to the C.A.T. Company, and by October 1948 the amount of gypsum extracted increased to 200 tons. From January 1949 to July 1949, a total of 420 tons had been extracted, and from August to the close of the year, 650 tons. Jacques Leblanc, a geologist working for Qatar Petroleum, notes that while the British report explicitly mentions Jebel Nakhsh, the mountain bears no apparent signs of exploitation and that it may be a case of mistaken identity.