Fuel shortages in the UK?

Aren’t London tube drivers on £60,000 +? But perhaps that’s because they have a strong union.

All 4 fuel stations I passed enroute to London this morning had fuel and no queues.

1 station definitely had a couple of pumps with 1 or 2 of the 4 nozzles closed off but all 4 fuels were available somewhere.

I’ll be surprised if we’re not back to normal by the weekend.

During the beginning of the pandemic last year there was hoarding of toilet paper here. It only lasted a few days though, I guess you can only visit the toilet so many times a day :-) If the supply chain isn’t broken, then with fuel its even more predictable. People have a hard time increasing their consumption above normal and they won’t have many place to store fuel so demand will drop back quickly. If the supply chain is broken somewhere it’s another story.

THY wrote:

I guess you can only visit the toilet so many times a day :-)

That doesn’t stop you filling your shelves, cupboards, spare bedrooms etc with loo paper!

THY wrote:

People have a hard time increasing their consumption above normal and they won’t have many place to store fuel so demand will drop back quickly.

It will drop back eventually, but there is somewhere to store the excess fuel – at least for a while. A quick google tells me that there are 38 million cars registered in the UK, and we’ve just learned that a decent chunk of them (let’s be conservative and say 30%) never fill their tank above halfway in normal times.

Assuming an average tank size of 50 litres, than means that during normal times 285 million litres of fuel tank capacity are permanently empty – and that’s just in this 30% (11.4 million) we’re considering. So there is plenty of extra space to put this fuel that is being panic-bought – at least for now. The interesting question is when will it stop, and will it be because the panic has stopped or because everyone’s tanks are full? The proportion of the population capable of dealing with jerry cans, storing and decanting fuel etc. is likely very small, so I doubt non-vehicular storage is a significant factor.

Graham wrote:

The proportion of the population capable of dealing with jerry cans, storing and decanting fuel etc. is likely very small, so I doubt non-vehicular storage is a significant factor.

Agree – unlike with toilet paper fuel isn’t easy to store somewhere else than cars for 99% of the population. This makes the scenario much more predictable than had it been something else people where hoarding and could easily store at home. The extra fuel people buy now will lead to less demand within weeks, as fuel burn is fairly steady.

THY wrote:

The extra fuel people buy now will lead to less demand within weeks

Bot only in the unlikely case that Brits are not driving around like a chicken with its head cut off, in these hard times. What might be the case according to local media. Why else should fuel demand rise by 500 % in post-brexit times?

Just kidding.

THY wrote:

The extra fuel people buy now will lead to less demand within weeks, as fuel burn is fairly steady.

Exactly.

It is beyond what I have time to work out on the back on an envelope, but someone in government will have calculated how long such increased demand can go on for before there is insufficient tank space in the UK’s cars for it to continue. My guess is it would be less than two weeks.

UdoR wrote:

Bot only in the unlikely case that Brits are not driving around like a chicken with its head cut off

Actually people are driving less. As well as panic-buying they are conserving what they have, e.g. me and my team at work have cancelled a meet-up scheduled for tomorrow (we are spread out, would have been 100-200 miles per person) because we all want the fuel for our own use – we are not handing it over to our employer! So ultimately it will help speed up the end of the crisis.

I wonder how much fuel has been wasted in people driving around searching for it or sitting in queues with the engines running, just in case someone nips in front.