Grangemouth Future Industries Board: EIR release

Information requested

• All unreleased minutes from the Grangemouth Future Industries Board?
• All communications between the Scottish government and the Grangemouth Future Industries Board?
• All communications between the Scottish government and Falkirk council regarding the closure of Grangemouth oil refinery?
• All meeting the Scottish government has had internally and with external stakeholders regarding the closure of Grangemouth oil refinery?
• The Grangemouth future industry board economic impact assessment?

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.

• All unreleased minutes from the Grangemouth Future Industries Board?

All minutes of the Grangemouth Future Industry Board are available on the Scottish Government website at https://www.gov.scot/groups/grangemouth-future-industry-board/. Under regulation 6(1)(b) of the EIRs, we do not have to give you information which is already publicly available and easily accessible to you in another form or format. If, however, you do not have internet access to obtain this information from the website(s) listed, then please contact me again and I will send you a paper copy.

• All communications between the Scottish government and the Grangemouth Future Industries Board?

I wish to clarify that the secretariat function of the Grangemouth Future Industry Board (GFIB) is handled by Scottish Government officials and that there has been no “communication” between the Scottish Government and GFIB in the sense that you have requested.

• All communications between the Scottish government and Falkirk council regarding the closure of Grangemouth oil refinery?
• All meeting the Scottish government has had internally and with external stakeholders regarding the closure of Grangemouth oil refinery?

Under the terms of the exception at regulation 10(4)(a) of the EIRs (information not held), the Scottish Government is not required to provide information which it does not have. The Scottish Government does not hold this information because it has not met with Falkirk Council nor any other external or internal stakeholders to discuss the closure of the Petroineos refinery asset at Grangemouth. 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. While we recognise that there may be some public interest in information about the closure of the Grangemouth refinery, clearly we cannot provide information which we do not hold.

For clarity, there has been no announcement that the refinery at Grangemouth will close. However, we assume that you are referring to the 21 November 2023 announcement by Petroineos that the business will soon commence preparatory work to enable the construction of import terminal infrastructure at Finnart Ocean Terminal and Grangemouth. Therefore, we have included below a list of meetings between the Scottish Government and external stakeholders on this matter. This is inclusive of meetings that took place between the announcement being made and the date of your EIR request (16 January 2024):

Date	Engagement	Level	Purpose
Tuesday 21 November 2023	Petroineos management	Official	Notification given of announcement of preparatory work to enable import terminal infrastructure construction at Finnart and Grangemouth.
Tuesday 21 November 2023	UK Government Department for Energy Security and Net Zero	Official	Ongoing discussions with UKG on emerging issues
Wednesday 22 November 2023	UK Government Department for Energy Security and Net Zero	Official	Ongoing discussions with UKG on emerging issues
Thursday 23 November 2023	First Minister with Grangemouth Senior Management	Ministerial	Meeting with Grangemouth team to seek assurances and express concern
Thursday 23 November 2023	Cabinet Secretary meeting with Unite the Union	Ministerial	Meeting with Union Officials to gain insight and pledge support
Thursday 23 November 2023	Cabinet Secretary meeting with the STUC	Ministerial	Meeting with Union Officials to gain insight and pledge support
Friday 24 November 2023	Cabinet Secretary Meeting with MSPs and MPs to provide a briefing	Ministerial	Opportunity to provide briefing to MSPs and MPs on the current situation
Wednesday 29 November 2023	Meeting with UK Government Ministers	Ministerial	Bi-lateral discussion on the situation at Grangemouth
Tuesday 5 December 2023	Cabinet Secretary meeting with Michelle Thomson MSP	Ministerial	Discussion regarding constituency interests
Thursday 7 December 2023	Cabinet Secretary Meeting with Leader Falkirk Council	Ministerial	Meeting to discuss Grangemouth announcement and next steps
Monday 11 December 2023	Cabinet Secretary Meeting with Petroineos Senior Management	Ministerial	Pre-meeting ahead of meeting with Petroineos Shareholders
Tuesday 12 December 2023	Cabinet Secretary Meeting with Petroineos Shareholders	Ministerial	Meeting to seek assurances and press for further engagement on Grangemouth

Further to this the Grangemouth Future Industry Board Industrial Just Transition Forum met on 18 January 2024. Minutes for this meeting can be found at the link provided in the response to the first part of your request.

• The Grangemouth future industry board economic impact assessment?

Under the terms of the exception at 10(5)(d) the Scottish Government cannot release information that is in the course of completion. In this case, work on the Grangemouth Future Industry Board’s economic impact assessment is ongoing.

About FOI

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