Fuel crisis brings Britain to its knees

Fuel crisis brings Britain to its knees
REUTERS

LONDON, SEPT 13: The British Government summoned oil executives for emergency talks on Wednesday as fuel began trickling again, but six days of protests over sky-high petrol prices showed no sign of abating.

The first fuel dripped back into the system after days of drought, but Prime Minister Tony Blair's deadline for normal life to start resuming on Wednesday evening looked optimistic.

Hospitals in the worst-hit areas cancelled operations.

Banks ran low on cash; corpses stacked up in morgues.

Two in three of Britain's 13,000 filling stations remained empty and retailers said it would take three weeks to get back to normal. Even those lucky enough to have fuel were hit as truckers snarled up traffic, blaring their horns, in the heart of the capital.

"It's not moving as fast as we'd hoped it would," admitted Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott.

"It was said to us...that it would take between 10 days and three weeks to get back to normal."

On Tuesday, Blair all but ordered the oil giants to brave blockades erected by farmers, truckers and small-business owners in protest at Europe's highest petrol prices. There was some movement overnight -- but not enough to end the crisis.

Small groups of protesters began blockading refineries and fuel depots late last week, mimicking demonstrations in France.

They want government to cut fuel levies, which account for three-quarters of the price of fuel in Britain, but Labour says it will not jeopardise its goal of prudent economic stewardship.

Tax and duties make up 76 per cent of the price of unleaded petrol, which costs about $1.21 a litre in Britain.

Angry that fuel was now seeping out of blockaded refineries, truckers turned their sights on the capital, bringing traffic to a standstill from cosmopolitan Park Lane to Shaftesbury Avenue in the heart of theatreland. Their next target: parliament.

"We want Tony Blair to sit up and take notice. We just can't survive," said lorry driver Brian Doogue of Middlesex.

Oil chiefs swept into Downing Street for crisis talks with Blair and his top ministers, refusing all reporters' questions over their apparent reluctance to get deliveries moving again.

Blair was surrounded by his economic heavyweights --Prescott, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown and Trade and Industry Secretary Stephen Byers -- to ensure the government's demand that industry act came over loud and clear.

They won vocal union backing when the Trades Union Congress urged Labour to stand up to the protesters, saying: "The blockades are an unconstitutional and unlawful attempt to bully government into submission. They must not succeed."

Officials remain perplexed about why tanker trucks had been kept idle by such a tiny group of protesters, many of whom are armed with nothing more than a truck and a mobile phone.

Some fuel moved out of blockaded refineries overnight --under police escort and without violent opposition -- but mass shortages remained.

"Staff aren't getting to work. Patients can't be discharged home, so the pressures on the health service are really, really grave," the Royal College of Nursing said. "It's becoming critical in some parts of the country."

Conservative leader William Hague urged an end to a grass-roots campaign whose success has taken Britain by storm "because people's jobs and their livelihoods and their health services are at stake."

The London Chamber of Commerce said the crisis was costing British business up to 250 million pounds ($352 million) a day.

The government has designated priority services that need fuel first. But for ordinary motorists: no relief yet in sight.

"It will take about three weeks before we get back to where we were before this crisis began," said Ray Holloway of the Petrol Retailers' Association.

Compounding the problem was news that some drivers holed up inside the refineries were reluctant to comply with the orders, saying their sympathy lay with the protesters.

"There's a hell of a lot of pressure being put on us. It'shell in there and we support the protesters," said one fuel driver at the Trafford Park refinery in Manchester, northern England.