Correspondence between the Scottish Government and Shell: EIR release

Information requested

“Could you supply minutes/notes from meetings and correspondence between the Scottish Government and Shell, the oil company, from the last three months?”

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.

I enclose a copy of some of the information you requested. To ensure the information is relevant to the request, which refers to “Shell, the oil company”, we have interpreted this to only include the oil and gas part of the Shell business. This means that any minutes/notes/correspondence between the Scottish Government other parts of the Shell business, such as offshore wind or hydrogen, have not been considered in scope.

An exception under regulation 11(2) of the EIRs (personal information) applies to some the information requested because it is personal data of a third party and disclosing it would contravene the data protection principles in Article 5(1) of the General Data Protection Regulation and in section 34(1) of the Data Protection Act 2018. This exception is not subject to the 'public interest test', so we are not required to consider if the public interest in disclosing the information outweighs the public interest in applying the exception.

An exception under regulation 10 (5)(f) of the EIRs applies to some the information you have requested. This exception applies because disclosure of this information would, or would be likely to, cause substantial prejudice to the interests of a third party (in this case Shell) who provided information voluntarily to the Scottish Government

This exception 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 exception. We have found that, on balance, the public interest lies in favour of upholding the exception. We recognise that there is some public interest in release because the information withheld relates to particular elements of correspondence from Shell addressed to UK Government in relation to two recent consultation processes undertaken by the latter. We recognise that there is some public interest in the release of such information because of potential interest in how Shell has engaged with UK Government consultation processes. However, this is outweighed by the public interest in in preventing harm to the interests of a third party. Shell was not legally obliged to supply the information to the Scottish Government, and has done so in circumstances where it is not otherwise in the public domain and has not consented to it being disclosed.

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.

EIR 202500470130 - Information Released - Annex

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