‘Wild West’ petrol panic: Drivers spend night hunting for fuel

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More fighting has broken out on Britain’s ‘Wild West’ petrol forecourts today as drivers threw punches and even pulled knives as violent rows broke out in the long queues for fuel and £30 rationing was imposed in some areas to keep the pumps flowing.

Boris Johnson has been urged to stop ‘hiding away’ and address the nation as his own MPs slammed his decision not to bring in soldiers to deliver fuel immediately to ‘regain public confidence’.

With no sign of the Prime Minister, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps today claimed the pressure on filling stations is beginning to ease and insisted the Army would remain on standby despite admitting the queues will not ease yet.  

‘There are now the first very tentative signs of stabilisation in forecourt storage which won’t be reflected in the queues as yet,’ he said’, adding: ‘But it is the first time that we have seen more petrol actually in the petrol stations. The sooner we can all return to our normal buying habits, the sooner the situation will return to normal.’ As one driver was seen filling mineral water bottles with petrol, he said: ‘No more water bottles at petrol stations: it’s dangerous and not helpful’.

Britain’s fuel crisis shows no sign of abating today as drivers again queued through the night and new video has emerged of two men punching and kicking each other across a London Shell station in a row about whose turn it was to fill up. Two women yelling ‘what the f*** are you doing’ broke up the punch-up as one of the fighters pointed at his foe and yelled: ‘He stole my place’. 

Amid widespread scenes of enormous queueing across Britain’s forecourts, footage emerged of a man holding what appears to be a knife shouting at a driver outside a petrol station in Welling, south east London. The video then shows the car ramming into the alleged knifeman, who is then carried for several yards on the bonnet.  

And it is proving so difficult to get fuel, thieves have been siphoning it from cars, sometimes drilling into the petrol tank, Shadrack Olaloko, from Birmingham, said: ‘What these guys did was they came and drained out all my fuel in the tank’. 

The brawls broke out as motorists reported queues at 11pm, 3am and 5.30am across the UK as the Government was accused of being ‘asleep at the wheel’ and critics questioned claims within Whitehall that the crisis will be over within two to three days.   

Mike Granatt, former head of Britain’s civil contingencies secretariat, the section of the Cabinet Office responsible for emergency planning in the UK, said today that the Prime Minister should give a TV press conference on the fuel crisis, as Tony Blair did in 2000. He said: ‘It’s called leadership. And we need some. Someone needs to stand up and say this to people rather than hide away’.

Tobias Ellwood, chair of Parliament’s Defence Committee, has said the army should be mobilised, not just put on standby, to ‘regain public confidence’ and stop the fuel crisis.

The Conservative MP told Sky News: ‘The country wants to see the Government is in command and it has a clear cross-Whitehall plan. We have gone from 1% fuel pump shortages to 90% so altering people’s buying behaviour to prevent the panic buying and going back to previous purchasing patterns requires regaining the confidence of the nation.

‘I believe the army should not just be put on standby but in fact mobilised, be seen to be used. That will help ease the pressure on shortages of course, it will return public confidence, and then on top of that there is the bigger issue about articulating a clear strategy to alleviate the chronic shortage of lorry drivers.’

Such is the panic at the pumps, hundreds more people than usual have been filling up on the wrong fuel. Around 250 flustered drivers have had to be rescued by the AA’s specialist ‘fuel assist’ team on Saturday and Sunday – compared to around 20 in normal circumstances. One tanker driver told LBC that even they are struggling for fuel because they are spending so much time in queues with drivers also blocking access to HGV pumps. An industry source said while the claim could be ‘credible’, it is likely to be an isolated incident.

Danny Altmann, professor of immunology at Imperial College London, said Britain’s petrol stations had becoming the ‘Wild West’ after he queued for fuel only for it to sell out before everyone got to the pumps. He said: ‘Man behind me was furious and started punching the guard’, adding it ‘became a melee of 8-10 men on the ground, punching and kicking’. 

As fighting broke out at the pumps, it also emerged today:

Calls for Boris Johnson to stop ‘hiding’ and give press conference explaining what he is doing to end the crisis;Surrey says it is close to declaring a major incident and prioritising their stocks of fuel for key workers as Labour says NHS staff and critical workers should be given exclusive access to some pumps;Foreign lorry drivers say they will refuse the £4,000-a-month pay packet being offered if they return to the UK to drive tankers and trucks unless they are allowed to work in Britain for at least a year;Many Britons are set to face the biggest squeeze on their finances in years next month as the Government cuts support introduced at the start of the pandemic, while bills and household costs climb;

The Government is putting the military on standby after a widespread shortage of truck drivers, which has led to serious supply problems for retailers and restaurants in the past few months, meaning plentiful stocks of fuel have not reached filling stations. 

But critics have said Boris Johnson has known for months that there is a lack of HGV drivers but ministers have had had their ‘heads in the sand’. The Prime Minister has 150 soldiers ready to drive tankers but they will not be brought in yet with one Government source telling The Times: ‘We believe that the crisis will recede in the next few days’.

Grant Shapps has rejected criticism that the Government has been too slow to mobilise the Army to help deal with the fuel crisis.

Ministers announced on Monday they were putting troops on standby to deliver supplies as filling stations continued to run dry.

In a pool clip for broadcasters, Mr Shapps said: ‘There is a series of escalations that you go through in a crisis like this.

‘We have already put 18 different steps in place which stretch right the way back to the spring.

‘The system was just about coping until last weekend and it would have been capable of continuing to do so.

‘Unfortunately, as we have seen with toilet rolls and other things, once people start to pursue a particular item, it can quickly escalate.

‘But there is only so much petrol you can transfer into tanks. That is starting to work its way through.’  

He said that Brexit has been a ‘factor’ in the current fuel crisis.

Mr Shapps said the primary cause of the shortages had been the cancellation of HGV driver testing last year due to the pandemic.

However, he added: ‘Brexit I hear mentioned a lot and it no doubt will have been a factor.

‘On the other hand, it has actually helped us to change rules to be able to test more drivers more quickly.

‘So, it has actually worked in both ways.’

Mr Shapps condemned motorists who tried to fill up plastic water bottles with petrol as the panic buying continued.

‘It is dangerous and extremely unhelpful,’ he said.

Under an emergency government plan, key workers could be given ‘priority access’ to a number of petrol stations. The plan involves capping the amount of fuel drivers can buy and letting critical workers have ‘priority access’ to pumps, The Telegraph reports. 

Another option, the designated filling station scheme, could see ’emergency and critical service vehicles’ having priority access. This was done by Tony Blair’s government during the 2000 fuel crisis. 

Some areas have already seen bin collections cancelled, and teaching unions have warned that schools could need to go back to online learning if teachers cannot drive to work. 

After a dizzying 24 hours of dithering over the use of soldiers to plug the HGV driver gap, ministers agreed to put the Army on standby. It is hoped that panic-buying will ease this week to reduce pressure on fuel supplies. But if the crisis does not abate, ministers will trigger ‘Operation Escalin’.

About 150 military tanker drivers were put into a state of readiness under the operation, sources said. Some of them will receive further training in the next few days to be able to deliver fuel if required. The operation, originally conceived in case of a no-deal Brexit, could potentially see hundreds of troops brought in to help.   

Chairman of the British Medical Association council, Dr Chaand Nagpaul, told The Times that ‘everyone will have their own reasons for needing to fill up, but as pumps run dry there is a real risk that NHS staff won’t be able to do their jobs and provide vital services and care to people who urgently need it’. 

National officer of the GMB union, Rachel Harrison, told The Mirror: ‘During this completely avoidable crisis, petrol must be prioritised for those key workers who save lives and keep the country moving.’ 

Cabinet Office minister Steve Barclay chaired cross-government talks on Monday afternoon to discuss the situation as industry leaders continued to insist there is ‘plenty’ of fuel at UK refineries and terminals.

Leading suppliers, including BP, Esso and Shell, said demand for petrol should return to normal levels in ‘the coming days’. 

‘As an industry we are working closely with the Government to help ensure fuel is available to be delivered to stations across the country,’ they said in a joint statement last night. 

The government had already announced plans to issue temporary visas for 5,000 foreign truck drivers, suspend competition laws and entice former drivers back into the industry as part of measures to deal with the labour shortage.

It said it would now put a limited number of military tanker drivers on a state of readiness to be deployed if necessary.

‘While the fuel industry expects demand will return to its normal levels in the coming days, it’s right that we take this sensible, precautionary step,’ business minister Kwasi Kwarteng said in a statement late on Monday.

‘If required, the deployment of military personnel will provide the supply chain with additional capacity as a temporary measure to help ease pressures caused by spikes in localised demand for fuel.’

Prioritising key workers for fuel is not a sensible solution as it could cause ‘more chaos’ on the forecourts, a headteachers’ union has said.

Paul Whiteman, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT, said: ‘The last thing children need is further disruption to education given the experience of the last 18 months.

‘Prioritising key workers is not a sensible solution as it would be impossible to enforce and could cause more chaos on the forecourts.

‘The only real answer is for the Government to do everything in its power to get fuel to pumps and bring this situation to an end.’

He added that, so far, the school leaders’ union is not hearing that fuel supply issues are causing major problems for schools.

‘But if shortages go on much longer it is possible that children and teachers could find themselves unable to get to school – there could be problems with transport for special schools in particular,’ Mr Whiteman said.

The army tanker drivers will receive specialised training before deploying to help deal with supply chain issues, the government said.

The demand for fuel has meant that 50% to 90% of pumps were dry in some areas of Britain, according The Petrol Retailers Association (PRA), which represents independent fuel retailers who account for 65% of all the 8,380 UK forecourts.

The fuel industry says there is no shortage, and the issue is transporting petrol and diesel to forecourts.

‘As many cars are now holding more fuel than usual, we expect that demand will return to its normal levels in the coming days, easing pressures on fuel station forecourts. We would encourage everyone to buy fuel as they usually would,’ said a joint statement from fuel firms.

However, hauliers, gas stations and retailers say there are no quick fixes as the shortfall of truck drivers – estimated to be around 100,000 – was so acute, and because transporting fuel demands additional training and licensing.

The government said it was also extending specific HGV (heavy good vehicle) licences, which allow drivers to transport fuel, for those whose permits were due to expire in the next three months to allow them to keep working without having to take refresher courses.

Transport Minister Grant Shapps said they were already seeing an easing of demand at gas stations as the public responded to the message not to buy fuel unnecessarily.

The fuel crisis has seen up to nine in ten forecourts run dry, leaving NHS staff including doctors and nurses as well as care workers without petrol and schools planning a return to online learning because teachers can’t fill up their cars. There are growing calls for critical workers to get priority access to forecourts this week. 

Police have now been called in to control forecourts, with officers pictured at a north London Esso garage directing traffic, with all approaches to the station blocked by a huge queue of cars. 

John Apter, the national chair of the Police Federation of England and Wales, said officers are having to go to petrol stations to make sure people are ‘behaving sensibly’. He said: ‘People are panic buying fuel and this is putting a strain on policing in a number of ways.

‘Police officers are having to attend petrol stations to ensure people are behaving sensibly. They also must get to and from their place of work, and this is being increasingly inhibited as they struggle to fuel vehicles.

‘The government needs to give urgent consideration as to how my colleagues and other emergency workers can get the fuel they need to travel to work and do their job.’

It came as Halfords revealed the sale of jerry cans went up 1,656 per cent over the weekend, and one driver was filmed filling water bottles with petrol. 

Gavin Rabbitt stopped at Shell garage in Cobham Services on the M25 yesterday and sat in disbelief as he watched a woman empty two 1.5litre water bottles and then fill them up with fuel – seemingly unaware the bottle could explode, or melt, because it is not a vessel to legally carry petrol. 

Mr Rabbitt, from Tonbridge, Kent, who filmed the woman seemingly filling up water bottles with petrol, said: ‘I thought ”I can’t believe the stupidity of this woman”. This is the kind of thing that causes the problem. People filling up things they shouldn’t be filling up and no one else can get the fuel because of other people’s stupidity. The queue was all the way down the slip road. We were queuing for about 20 to 30 minutes. She was all blasé and doing it right in front of me. It’s ludicrous.’  

Britain’s biggest petrol retailers have said they expect the crisis to ease in the next three days because once people have a full tank, demand for fuel is likely to fall away by Thursday or Friday. And Downing Street again denied there is a shortage of fuel, saying there are ‘ample stocks in this country’.

But claims that the crisis will be over this week has been questioned by drivers. One said; ‘If there was a delivery driver shortage last week, causing some stations to run out, how will that be miraculously resolved by the middle of this week? Some garages around London were out of fuel even before panic buying kicked in’. Another wrote: ‘It’s hard to rebuild confidence again when this kind of thing starts. People will just keeping topping up their cars and never let them go below a quarter for a long time’. 

The U-turn on calling in the Army was rapid. Environment Secretary George Eustice said yesterday the Government has ‘no plans at the moment’ to use soldiers to drive petrol tankers amid continuing shortages at filling stations. He said: ‘We’ve no plans at the moment to bring in the Army to actually do the driving, but we always have a Civil Contingencies section within the Army on standby – but we’re not jumping to that necessarily at the moment.’ That all changed later on,

The British Medical Association (BMA) called for healthcare staff and essential workers to be given priority to access fuel, warning that as pumps run dry ‘there is a real risk that NHS staff won’t be able to do their jobs’.  

Drivers queued for four hours or more in lines stretching for miles and some even slept in their cars outside petrol stations.  

Electrician Roland McKibbin, 31, from Beckenham, south-east London, said he would only be able to reach one of his jobs on Monday having been unable to fill up his tank, despite visiting four petrol stations.  He said: ‘So, basically, the panic-buying idiots have lost me income, and directly taken food off the table for my wife and five-year old son, because I can’t wire people’s houses from home, unfortunately. I wasted about 15 miles of fuel looking – in the end I had to turn back as I was on fumes.’  

Karenza Passmore, 55, from Langley Park in County Durham, is the director of the North East Religious Resources centre, an educational charity.   

She said she was unable to drive to work on Monday, while the charity may be unable to move resources – such as books and artefacts – to schools and faith groups. ‘Yesterday I used 30 (miles) trying to find some diesel but there was no fuel,’ she said.

Colin Owens, who runs Oil 4 Wales petrol stations in Wales, has said panic buying is completely unnecessary as ‘refinery tanks are full’, adding that panic buying has seen sales reach five times the levels of last week.

Boris Johnson‘s plan to bring in 5,000 foreign lorry drivers to deal with the shortage suffered a major blow after the head of an EU truck union declaring they ‘will not go to the UK for a short term visa to help UK out of the s**t they created themselves’. Edwin Atema, who represents drivers across the EU and Europe said: ‘Before the coronavirus crisis and Brexit this industry was sick already. Plagued by expectation, by irresponsible multinationals who drag down prices, which ended up with drivers voting with their feet and leaving the industry’. 

A lack of fuel led to a mass return to working from home , just weeks after the Government lifted most coronavirus-related legislation to get more people into the office. TomTom traffic data revealed that congestion is down today in all major cities compared to when the chaos began last week.

And petrol stations with a fresh delivery of fuel have already been accused of of hiking fuel prices to as high as £1.57 per litre – up from the national average of £1.35 last week –  and another 10p price rise could be on the way, experts have warned, as some garages sold out of fuel in an hour this morning.

Schools have said they will return to the online classrooms used in lockdown if teachers can’t get to work – with some parents also unable to drive – while many petrol stations are now prioritising NHS workers in special two-hour slots where they must show ID to fill up. The manager of a petrol station near Heathrow Airport said staff had been forced to close the toilets to stop customers waiting there for pumps to reopen.

One school in Surrey wrote to parents over the weekend saying: ‘The current petrol crisis could potentially disrupt school next week. The ability of staff and pupils to get to school may be compromised and there may also be issues with our food deliveries.  Clearly, we have no desire to go back online so soon after the challenges of the last couple of years but we cannot exclude the possibility that it may be necessary’.

One headteacher tweeted: ‘This is actually going to be a problem. I don’t have any fuel myself and all the stations in my area are out of diesel. Most of my teachers commute further than ten miles to work’. Desperate motorists have even started following fuel delivery drivers to petrol stations, earning the nickname ‘tanker w***ers’ from critics, as panic buying continues across the UK with fights even breaking out at the pumps. 

One Twitter user said: ‘My brother in law is a lorry driver and delivers fuel. He’s on the road now and there are people following him – literally tracking his every turn – in cars. He says it’s like end of days’. He added: ‘I worried it might be really scary for him, but he just thinks they’re all kn*bs’. 

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said designated petrol stations should be reserved for essential workers.

He said: ‘As the current reductions in fuel delivery affect petrol stations across the capital, it is essential that key workers are able to get fuel to travel to work and provide the services our city needs.

‘In the fuel crisis of September 2000, the government brought in rules designating specific filling stations for essential workers, enabling the capital to keep moving.

‘The Government must urgently look at taking the necessary steps putting such measures in place, so that those key workers who have to drive to work can do so.

‘We will continue to monitor developments closely and advise the Government on required actions.’

The British Medical Association (BMA) has called for healthcare staff and essential workers to be given priority to access fuel, warning that as pumps run dry ‘there is a real risk that NHS staff won’t be able to do their jobs’.

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, chair of council at the BMA, said: ‘Emergency and essential workers rely on fuel both to travel to work and for their work itself – whether this is to get to hospitals, practices and other healthcare settings, or for ambulances to reach people in urgent need of care and GPs to visit very ill patients at home.

‘Everyone will have their own reasons for needing to fill up, but as pumps run dry there is a real risk that NHS staff won’t be able to do their jobs and provide vital services and care to people who urgently need it.

‘While the Government has said it is putting plans in place to alleviate the shortage of HGV drivers to transport fuel, the results of this won’t be immediate. Healthcare and essential workers must therefore be given priority access to fuel so they can continue their crucial work and guarantee care to patients.’ 

One worker has said people panic-buying have ‘directly taken food off the table’ of his wife and son, as many struggled to commute without any fuel.

Queues stretched out from petrol stations at the weekend as panic-buying added to fuel supply issues caused by a lack of HGV drivers.

A petrol station worker said the demand for fuel has been ‘unprecedented’ at his small local garage and that shop sales have ‘tanked’ following a weekend of panic-buying.

Yasser Ahmed, 37, who runs West Drayton service station with his father, said his four-pump station had gone through 30,000 litres of fuel – the amount it would usually sell in a whole week – in just two days.

‘That’s completely not normal,’ he said.

‘Yesterday we didn’t open up, we lost a whole day yesterday, today dad is in, only because we have a lot of regular customers from the local community who are going to work and want to grab their coffee first in the morning.

‘That’s the only reason we opened up. We’re not selling anything inside, our shop sales have tanked.

‘People are saying on social media that petrol station owners are doing really well and making a lot of money – we’re not. We make our money from shop sales, and they’re gone.’

Mr Ahmed said he had placed an order immediately on Friday afternoon but was still waiting on confirmation of another fuel delivery for Wednesday.

‘We’re a family-run business, just myself and my dad, so we’re going to have to work however we can,’ he told the PA news agency.

‘It’s like in the pandemic, we just did what we needed to do to get by.

‘Everyone is panic-buying through fear that it’s going to run out and, because of that, it actually has run out.’

Electrician Roland McKibbin, 31, from Beckenham, south-east London, said he would only be able to reach one of his jobs on Monday having been unable to fill up his tank, despite visiting four petrol stations.

‘I rely on fuel to travel to jobs – no fuel means I can’t drive, which means I can’t get to jobs with my tools,’ he told the PA news agency.

‘So, basically, the panic-buying idiots have lost me income, and directly taken food off the table for my wife and five-year old son, because I can’t wire people’s houses from home, unfortunately.

‘I wasted about 15 miles of fuel looking – in the end I had to turn back as I was on fumes.’

Mr McKibbin said being unable to travel would cost him ‘at least £200 for the day’ while he will have to cancel jobs on Tuesday if he cannot fill up before then.

‘We’ve been left at the short end of the stick along with ambulance staff etc,’ he said.

The Environment Secretary George Eustice said there were ‘no plans at the moment’ to use the Army to drive petrol tankers amid continuing shortages at filling stations, after Boris Johnson was thought to be considering sending in troops.

Karenza Passmore, 55, from Langley Park in County Durham, is the director of the North East Religious Resources centre, an educational charity.

She said she was unable to drive to work on Monday, while the charity may be unable to move resources – such as books and artefacts – to schools and faith groups.

‘Yesterday I used 30 (miles) trying to find some diesel but there was no fuel,’ she told PA.

‘The nearest garage to me is four miles so it’s a risk now, (chancing) my arm to see if the fuel stations have any in. 

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