Correspondence between Scottish Government and Petroineos regarding Grangemouth: EIR release

Information requested

A copy of all written correspondence between Petroineos/INEOS and the Scottish Government regarding the Grangemouth refinery in the calendar years 2020 and 2021.

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.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance we are unable to provide some of the information you have requested because exceptions under regulations 10(5)(e) (substantial prejudice to confidentiality of commercial or industrial information); 10(5)(a) (substantial prejudice to international relations, defence, national security or public safety) and 11(2) (personal information) of the EIRs apply to some of the information enclosed in the minute I am releasing as part of this request. The reasons why these exceptions apply are explained in Annex A of this letter.

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.

FOI 202500463991 - Information Released - Annex A

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