FOI/202500459445 · FOI/EIR · unclear
Communications between the Director of Energy and Climate Change and selected energy companies: EIR release
Information requested
Copies of all electronic communications (emails, whatsapp) from 1 July 2024 to 28 March 2025 between Kersti Berge, Director of Energy and Climate Change and senior officials from the following organisations:
Shell Equinor Ithaca Energy Offshore Energies UK (OEUK)
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 exception 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 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, 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.
In dealing with your request, four documents have been identified in the search. I have included these four documents in Annex A, Annex B, Annex C and Annex D 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.
Detected exemption language
We are applying the exception 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.