Funding provided by Scottish Government to Petroineos to support the Grangemouth Refinery: EIR release

Information requested

Appearing on the BBC Question Time programme on 6th February 2024, the Deputy First Minister, Kate Forbes, said:

“The reason Grangemouth had lasted for as long as it had is because of financial support that we had put in place and plans for its future.”

Please can you provide full details of the financial support provided by the Scottish Government, including the dates of all payments.

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.

Please see the table below funding provided by the Scottish Government to Petroineos to support the Grangemouth Refinery since 2011.

Title of project	Date support provided / confirmed	Total provided
Low carbon fuels study	July 2021	£123,717 (50% of total costs) [business provided other 50%]. Funding was provided via Scottish Enterprise.
Bio-refinery pre-appraise study	July 2022	Grant funding of £87,000 (50% of total costs) [business provided other 50%]. Funding was provided via Scottish Enterprise.
Bio-refinery appraise study	September 2023	Grant funding of £97,500 (50% of total costs) [business provided other 50%]. Funding was provided via Scottish Enterprise.
Project Willow cross site study	Announced in July 2024, grant agreement signed on 7 November 2024	£799,000 (50% of total costs) [UKG provided other 50%]

We have carried out internal searches to identify financial support provided to Petroineos beyond the grants listed above. We can advise that, though the above table is exhaustive of information held by the Scottish Government as regards Scottish Government support provided to the Refinery business, external bodies and agencies might hold information pertaining to public sector support for the business.

In relation to any financial support through the non-domestic rates system, the Scottish Government does not have this information because the administration of non-domestic rates including the award of reliefs is a matter for Local Authorities. You may wish to contact Falkirk Council who will be able to advise on such matters. Contact details for each Local Authority in Scotland are available at:

https://www.mygov.scot/organisations#scottish-local-authority

In relation to any additional financial support that Scottish Enterprise might have provided alone, you may wish to contact Scottish Enterprise to receive this information if it is held. Contact details for Scottish Enterprise are available here:

https://www.scottish-enterprise.com/contact-us

About FOI

The Scottish Government is committed to publishing all information released in response to Freedom of Information requests. View all FOI responses at https://www.gov.scot/foi-responses.