Transport Secretary Grant Shapps urged Britons to stop panic-buying gas as the Petrol Retailers Association warned that a U.K. supply crisis that has led to pumps running dry is still days away from being sorted.
The government and fuel industry said Tuesday there are early signs supplies are increasing at gas stations, while demand is also reducing after people filled up their tanks in recent days. But there were long lines at forecourts, and some retailers still said supplies remain patchy.
Boris Johnson’s government is struggling to show it can get control, with images of the chaos at gas stations dominating the newspapers for days on an issue of fundamental importance to voters. It’s just the latest example of supply chain disruption and shortages during the pandemic, which exacerbated an existing shortage of truck shortage of truck drivers after Brexit.
That makes the issue perilous for Johnson, who led the campaign to split the U.K. from its biggest trading partner and critically, signed the divorce deal and trade agreement that cut the supply of labor from the EU’s seamless market.
The government has tried to shift the focus away from Brexit, instead blaming the crisis on the surge in demand caused by an economic rebound from the coronavirus pandemic. The Army has been put on standby to help with deliveries, as ministers try to show they’re getting a grip of the problem.
Calling the Army
Shapps’s announcement reduces the likelihood that Army truck drivers will be deployed—though he didn’t give any data to support the government’s view that supply levels are now increasing.
The scenes at forecourts around London early Tuesday suggested the crisis is far from over. From Woodford New Road in north London to the Albert Embankment opposite Parliament and Sevenoaks on the city’s southern fringes, many sites still had no fuel.
Locations that did have supplies were experiencing strong demand. At one BP Plc station in southwest London, a truck was in the process of unloading its fuel cargo as a line of about fifty cars waited for it finish.
“There’s still a problem out there, there’s still a bit of panic buying, there’s still queuing,” Brian Madderson, chairman of the Petrol Retailers Association, told Sky News on Tuesday. “But we are hopeful that we are seeing the first signs of a move toward equilibrium later in the week.”
The U.K.’s biggest fuel suppliers indicated it is still a challenge to restore smooth operations. Tesco Plc and Wm Morrison Supermarkets Plc said in separate statements that it still required hard work to ensure adequate supplies of fuel to their service stations.
J Sainsbury Plc said it was experiencing high demand and Exxon Mobil Corp. asked customers to “stick to their normal buying patterns.”
‘Just About Coping’
Shapps also appeared to blame the public, though he also acknowledged the shortage of truck drivers, when he said the system was “just about coping” before anxiety set in. “The sooner we can all return to our normal buying habits, the sooner the situation will return to normal.”
The shortages have triggered concerns about key services being disrupted if staff are not able to fill up and travel to work.
In addition to putting the Army on alert, ministers have announced 5,000 short-term visas for foreign truck drivers—a U-turn on Johnson’s Brexit policy—and suspended competition rules to allow suppliers to coordinate deliveries.
The negative headlines for the government have also coincided with a growing focus in the U.K. on the surging cost of living, with electricity prices rising just as key pandemic support measures come to an end.
Still, the latest official data on U.K. gas prices offered some respite. The price of a liter of unleaded petrol inched up just 0.3 pence to 135.19 pence ($1.84) per liter in the week through Monday.
