Fuel protests attract low turnout

There has been a low turnout for the fuel tax protests scheduled to begin across Britain on Wednesday morning.

The biggest planned demonstration, at the Shell oil refinery in Jarrow, south Tyneside, only attracted around a dozen supporters, while handfuls of supporters were also reported at other refineries around the country.

However, protestors have insisted that they have successfully made their point about recent price increases. Andrew Spence, spokesperson for the People’s Fuel Lobby, told the BBC that the group had only wanted a handful of protestors and had merely wanted to draw attention to the recent fuel price increases. He stressed that protestors had not planned to blockade refineries, as had happened in 2000. He said: “I doubt that the government would have given us the 1.2p freeze in duty proposed for October. I like to think that we have achieved something this week.”

In 2000, Britain came to a virtual standstill as a result of blockades by protestors at oil refineries across the country. The announcement of further protests prompted ‘panic buying’ of a fuel at many petrol stations on Tuesday, which resulted in some stations running out of fuel.

However, the transportation of fuel has not been disrupted and many of those stations, which ran out on Tuesday, have now reportedly been restocked.

Ray Holloway, from the Petrol Retailers Association said that the low turnout at the protests was predictable and urged motorists not to ‘panic buy’. He said that the fact that six days’ worth of petrol had been purchased within two days was “crazy”. “Motorists simply must accept that there is going to be no disruption to their petrol and diesel supplies,” he said.

Chris Hunt, from the UK Petroleum Industry Association, also described the protests as “fairly low key” and said that they had not obstructed tankers. He said that police were on stand-by in order to prevent the chaos that occurred during the protests five years ago.

Fuel prices have risen rapidly recently, due to a combination of factors, including the impact of Hurricane Katrina in the US.

On Tuesday, Chancellor Gordon Brown called for Opec countries to increase supply in order to tackle the rising prices, during a speech at the TUC conference. However, he resisted calls to reduce fuel duty.

(KMcA/SP)