Meetings between Scottish Government and Petroineos: EIR release

Information requested

A list of every meeting held between Petroineos and Scottish Government Ministers on the Biofuel Production Options Review in Grangemouth.

A list of every meeting held between Petroineos and Scottish Government Ministers on Decarbonisation Interventions in Grangemouth.

A list of every meeting held between Petroineos and Scottish Government Ministers on the on the viability of a Blue Hydrogen Production Plant in Grangemouth.

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 listing the meetings that fall within the scope of your original request.

Date of meeting	Meeting title	Minister(s) attending	Topic(s) discussed
19 April 2023	Ministerial engagement with INEOS	Mairi McAllan MSP, Cabinet Secretary for Net Zero and Just Transition	“Blue Hydrogen Production”

We have carried out extensive searches of our records for meetings discussing the topics mentioned in your original request. It is possible that the topics you specified have been discussed at meetings other than those we have listed, however this may not be reflected in the meeting minutes, therefore we do not hold this information on record.

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.