Liquid Petroleum Gas imports (FOI)

Request

Regarding the imports of Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) into Jersey for the period 1998 to date, please provide the following annual data:- 

A

Name of LPG carrier. 

B

Offload dates.

C

Tonnes of LPG propane.

Response 

A to C

A search was undertaken to identify consignment imports for the following goods together with the manifested weight with the specific words ‘Propane’, Propane lifts, cages, stillage and cylinders, Butane, Butane cylinders, refills and cans, Camping Gaz.

Please see attached table that includes the results from the above searches.

Table.xlsx

Note:

• It is not necessary to provide commodity codes for goods traded between the UK and Jersey by virtue of the Jersey-UK Customs Arrangement.  In the absence of commodity codes it is not possible to identify with certainty consignments of specific goods
• The returned data is based upon the goods description and gross / net mass as supplied and input by shippers and is therefore unlikely to be entirely accurate
• Similarly, it appears certain that some gross and net mass data has been entered inconsistently and, by way of example, may include some entries in kilograms and others in tons
• Any obviously erroneous data has been excluded.

Data for the period 1998 to 2018 is not held by Jersey Customs and Immigration Services however the following historic data is held by Statistics Jersey for LPG imports: 

Internal Review Request

I write to respectfully request an internal review of part of the below decision. 

Those parts of the decision which I take issue with are as follows:-

1. The LPG carrier is not provided

2. Then offload dates are not provided.

3. The annual imports for the years 1998-2004 and, importantly, 2016-2017, are not provided. 

4. To the excel spreadsheet provided for the years 2018-2023, the data is unusable because the weights are not defined. In other words, it is impossible for the reader to discern whether the data is in tonnes or kilo grams or lbs.

My grounds for the review for inclusion of the above data are as follows: -

1. It is inconceivable that (1) the above import data is not held by the States of Jersey and/or (2) the States of Jersey does not know how much LPG was imported in Jersey each year for the period 1998 to date.  

2. As a matter of customary domestic boarder laws, every country in the world with a port, including Jersey, hold records for each and every import and export shipment.  

3. All of the missing data ought to be found in customary shipping manifests which the shipper would have had to submit to Jersey Ports and Jersey Customs and Excise in advance of each and every LPG delivery during the requisite period, 1998 to 2023.  

4. In view of ground 3, unverifiable third-party data held by Jersey Statistics cannot be taken into account.

Internal Review Response

This review has been completed by two senior staff members of the Government of Jersey, independent of the original decision-making process. 

Data for the period 1998 to 2018 is not held by Jersey Customs and Immigration Services however the historic data was provided by Statistics Jersey for LPG imports. The Customs and Immigration retention schedule, July 2019, states that statistics need to be retained for five years before being transferred to the Jersey Archive. Information held by Jersey Archive was viewed and there were no relevant statistics pertaining to this Freedom of Information request held.

The Panel noted that no reference had been made in the original response to Article 33 (Commercial Interests) which should have been included as follows: 

Article 33(b) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 applies. Since the exemption which is engaged is a qualified, not an absolute, exemption, a public interest test has been conducted as required by Article 9(2) of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 to assess whether, in all circumstances of the case, the public interest in supplying the information is outweighed by the public interest in not doing so. Information disclosed is considered to be public information, and while there is a presumption towards disclosure, consideration needs to be given as to who will have access to this information beyond the requestor and the purposes for which they could use the information. 

The Government of Jersey has assessed the impact of releasing the information withheld under Article 33(b), in order to decide whether disclosure would, or would likely to, prejudice their commercial interests or those of any third party(ies). The information withheld relates to the names of the LPG carriers, offload dates and tonnage as, if released, it is considered that this would likely prejudice their commercial interests, including supply chain negotiations. Further, any information provided to the Jersey Customs and Immigration Service (JCIS) is provided under a duty of confidentiality and therefore Article 26 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011 has been applied. For these reasons it was agreed with the applicant that details of all propane and butane imports would be provided, and not just the information originally requested. 

JCIS only hold weight data as submitted and recorded by shippers on CAESAR. The system does not specify how the weights are defined.

The information requested is not held by the Government of Jersey. Article 3 of the Freedom of information (Jersey) Law 2011 applies.

However, it may be held by Ports of Jersey so you might wish to send your request in writing to: 

ask@ports.je

or by post to: 

Ports of Jersey, St Peter, Jersey, JE1 1BY 

It should be noted that Ports of Jersey are not a Scheduled Public Authority (SPA), therefore, they are not required to respond under Freedom of Information legislation. 

The Panel, having considered the original response, together with the additional information provided to them, concluded that the response was correct and therefore upheld.

Articles applied

Article 3 - Meaning of “information held by a public authority”

For the purposes of this Law, information is held by a public authority if –

(a)     it is held by the authority, otherwise than on behalf of another person; or

(b)     it is held by another person on behalf of the authority.

Article 26 - Information supplied in confidence

Information is absolutely exempt information if –

(a) it was obtained by the scheduled public authority from another person (including another public authority); and

(b) the disclosure of the information to the public by the scheduled public authority holding it would constitute a breach of confidence actionable by that or any other person.

Article 33 - Commercial interests

Information is qualified exempt information if –

(a) it constitutes a trade secret; or

(b) its disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice the commercial interests of a person (including the scheduled public authority holding the information).