There's going to be fuel shortages in the UK real soon [View All]

[billyskank]

The fuel price lobby here has been intimating that there will be protests this week. Back in 2000 truckers blockaded refineries in the UK, complaining of high fuel prices. That protest lasted a week, causing large disruption throughout the whole country, although the protest had fairly wide public sympathy. At that time the price of petrol was about 80p a litre; today it is more like 95p.

It is not clear what the fuel protesters are intending to do. So how do I know there are going to be shortages? During the last protest, supplies were not actually that badly affected. The shortages were caused by panic buying. This morning there were queues at the petrol station; the cashier at the petrol station was saying that this was very irregular, and grumbling that this panic buying was unnecessary. (I have to admit I was part of the problem; I had half a tank already but I wanted to have enough to get me through the next week and a half, just in case).

So I think that panic buying is going to cause another fuel shortage, regardless of what the fuel protesters actually do.

There was one upside to it all. The roads are much more civilised this way. I noticed this last time also; everybody drives slower to conserve fuel. I myself was also driving with a light foot, avoiding hard acceleration, short-shifting and driving at or under the speed limit all the way. The trip to work is much less stressful when everyone is driving in this manner!