South Essex sees 6th successive day of petrol station queues

Bus services have again been delayed, while some forecourts have been shut off due to a shortage of fuel.

In Basildon, queues were seen at the Tesco petrol stations at the Mayflower Retail Park and in Pitsea.

Staff have again been helping to organise drivers and keep traffic moving where possible.

The forecourt at the Tesco in Pitsea

Other forecourts such as the one at Sainsbury’s in Basildon haven’t been so lucky and had to close after it ran out of petrol and diesel.

It was a similar story at the BP garage in East Mayne.

The Sainsbury's in Basildon was forced to close its forecourt

The Toomey Motor Group opened its petrol station in Basildon around 3am this morning after receiving a delivery.

It shut for a short time around lunchtime before reopening at 2pm.

Bus services on Canvey and Southend have again faced delays today because of petrol station queues.

The BP garage in East Mayne was also closed today

First Essex was unable to serve the Morrisons on Canvey because of queueing traffic while Arriva was forced to terminate its service 29 at the Woodcutters pub due to queueing on The Fairway in Leigh.

Delays have also been reported throughout the day on the A129 as a result of queueing for petrol stations.

Queues several miles long formed on the southbound carriageway between Rayleigh High Street and Rayleigh Weir due to congestion at the Shell petrol station.

Despite a sixth consecutive day of the fuel crisis, the head of a fuel supplier has predicted the UK is over the worst of the shortage at petrol pumps.

James Spencer, managing director at Portland Fuel, told the BBC: “I would say logically the worst is behind us. The original crisis – if you want to call it that – was caused by 25 to 30 petrol stations closing down near the south coast.

“It was never a particularly major crisis in the first place, obviously then there was the panic buying, sales at forecourts went up by 500% over the weekend.

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“Lot of people have filled up their tanks now, so you might actually see a dip in demand and the replenishment of fuel at petrol stations is a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week job, so as we speak the petrol stations are being replenished.

“To a certain extent that hasn’t been helped by all the queues at the petrol stations because all of the tankers have not been able to get in.”

He added: “I would probably have to say there is a minor supply problem which is related to a shortage in tanker drivers. The shortage of tanker drivers is nothing like as acute as the shortage of general haulage drivers.”