Energy and Climate Change Directorate meetings with oil and gas operators: EIR release

Information requested

Since May 2024 how many meetings have civil servants within the Energy and Climate Change Directorate had with

1) Companies with investments in Oil and Gas

2) Oil and Gas operators

3) Organisations representing Oil and Gas companies, including trade associations and public relations companies

-A list of all these meetings, with dates attached.

Response

As the information you have requested is 'environmental information' for the purposes of the Environmental Information (Scotland) Regulations 2004 (EIRs), we are required to deal with your request under those Regulations. We are applying the exemption at section 39(2) of the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002 (FOISA), so that we do not also have to deal with your request under FOISA.

This exemption is subject to the 'public interest test'. Therefore, taking account of all the circumstances of this case, we have considered if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exemption. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exemption, because there is no public interest in dealing with the same request under two different regimes. This is essentially a technical point and has no material effect on the outcome of your request.

We have interpreted part 2) of your request as seeking information on meetings with offshore oil and gas operators within the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) and onshore oil and gas operators within Scotland.

For consistency, part 1) and part 3) of your request have then been interpreted as being in relation to companies with investments in (in case of part 1) or organisations representing (in case of part 3) oil and gas operators within the UK Continental Shelf (UKCS) and onshore oil and gas operators within Scotland.

Bodies which are not oil and gas operators (or organisations representing such companies) were not included in the searches. This includes regulators, training bodies and supply chain companies.

As your request seeks information on meetings “had” by Civil Servants, meetings where officials attended in support of Ministers have not been considered as in scope.

In relation to part 1) of your request, Scottish Government officials do not routinely carry out checks on all aspects of a company investment profile ahead of any meeting. As such, we are only able to identify meetings which meet the criteria of this part of your request in cases where it was specifically known that the companies in question hold such investments. All of these instances were also captured by the searches undertaken for part 2) of your request, so we have supplied this information only once. Similarly, in instances where meetings meet the criteria for both parts 2) and 3) of your request (for example, because both individual oil and gas operators and organisations representing such companies were both present), this information has been supplied only once.

In relation to part 2) of your request, Civil Servants within the Energy and Climate Change Directorate have, between 1 May and 6 November 2024, met on 49 occasions with oil and gas operators. The dates of these meetings are provided below:

15/05/2024	03/07/2024	08/08/2024	10/09/2024	09/10/2024
21/05/2024	10/07/2024	12/08/2024	10/09/2024	14/10/2024
28/05/2024	10/07/2024	13/08/2024	11/09/2024	18/10/2024
04/06/2024	15/07/2024	20/08/2024	11/09/2024	22/10/2024
14/06/2024	16/07/2024	22/08/2024	16/09/2024	24/10/2024
18/06/2024	17/07/2024	27/08/2024	19/09/2024	28/10/2024
21/06/2024	30/07/2024	27/08/2024	19/09/2024	05/11/2024
25/06/2024	01/08/2024	05/09/2024	24/09/2024	05/11/2024
01/07/2024	06/08/2024	09/09/2024	04/10/2024	05/11/2024
02/07/2024	06/08/2024	10/09/2024	08/10/2024

In relation to part 3) of your request, Civil Servants within the Energy and Climate Change Directorate have, between 1 May and 6 November 2024, met on 63 occasions with organisations representing oil and gas operators. The dates of these meetings are provided below:

21/05/2024	13/06/2024	11/07/2024	05/08/2024	10/09/2024	04/10/2024	28/10/2024
23/05/2024	18/06/2024	16/07/2024	13/08/2024	12/09/2024	08/10/2024	29/10/2024
28/05/2024	25/06/2024	17/07/2024	13/08/2024	16/09/2024	08/10/2024	06/11/2024
28/05/2024	26/06/2024	18/07/2024	15/08/2024	17/09/2024	08/10/2024
29/05/2024	03/07/2024	23/07/2024	15/08/2024	24/09/2024	10/10/2024
04/06/2024	04/07/2024	24/07/2024	19/08/2024	24/09/2024	17/10/2024
04/06/2024	04/07/2024	24/07/2024	21/08/2024	01/10/2024	17/10/2024
06/06/2024	09/07/2024	25/07/2024	26/08/2024	01/10/2024	21/10/2024
11/06/2024	10/07/2024	30/07/2024	27/08/2024	03/10/2024	23/10/2024
12/06/2024	10/07/2024	30/07/2024	05/09/2024	03/10/2024	28/10/2024

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