newboytothenova2
11-09-05, 12:16 PM
Britain is bracing itself for a week of disruption, as fuel protesters threaten refinery demonstrations and motorway go-slows.
Campaigners from the Fuel Lobby have given government ministers three days to meet them to discuss their grievances or face protests on Wednesday.
Anger is rising over the price of petrol at the pumps, which has reached ?1 a litre after rising more than 20 per cent in recent months and threatens to be forced higher by the disruption caused to the US oil industry by Hurricane Katrina.
On Saturday Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown issued a plea to oil-producing countries to step up supplies in order to calm the current price spike.
But he and other EU finance ministers meeting in Manchester stopped short of offering the kind of tax cuts on fuel demonstrators are demanding.
Mr Brown - who will discuss the oil crisis in a speech to the TUC on Tuesday - poured cold water on hopes of direct Government action to bring down prices, insisting they were "a global problem which requires global solutions".
He urged oil producers to recognise their "common interest" in ensuring sufficient supplies reach the market to keep prices down.
Fuel Lobby spokesman Andrew Spence said it would have been "common sense" for EU ministers to have agreed fuel tax cuts to ease the burden on motorists and hauliers, rather than relying on the oil-producing states to solve their problems.
He said he had been contacted by truckers in France and Spain who were planning their own protests in sympathy with Wednesday's demonstrations in the UK. But he played down expectations of refinery blockades of the kind which brought Britain to a standstill in 2000.
"I strongly urge against blockades," he said.
"We want peaceful protests. We are going to maintain a presence, but we will not be stopping supplies going in or going out. It should not be disruptive. I can't say strenuously enough that people should not be panic-buying."
Campaigners from the Fuel Lobby have given government ministers three days to meet them to discuss their grievances or face protests on Wednesday.
Anger is rising over the price of petrol at the pumps, which has reached ?1 a litre after rising more than 20 per cent in recent months and threatens to be forced higher by the disruption caused to the US oil industry by Hurricane Katrina.
On Saturday Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown issued a plea to oil-producing countries to step up supplies in order to calm the current price spike.
But he and other EU finance ministers meeting in Manchester stopped short of offering the kind of tax cuts on fuel demonstrators are demanding.
Mr Brown - who will discuss the oil crisis in a speech to the TUC on Tuesday - poured cold water on hopes of direct Government action to bring down prices, insisting they were "a global problem which requires global solutions".
He urged oil producers to recognise their "common interest" in ensuring sufficient supplies reach the market to keep prices down.
Fuel Lobby spokesman Andrew Spence said it would have been "common sense" for EU ministers to have agreed fuel tax cuts to ease the burden on motorists and hauliers, rather than relying on the oil-producing states to solve their problems.
He said he had been contacted by truckers in France and Spain who were planning their own protests in sympathy with Wednesday's demonstrations in the UK. But he played down expectations of refinery blockades of the kind which brought Britain to a standstill in 2000.
"I strongly urge against blockades," he said.
"We want peaceful protests. We are going to maintain a presence, but we will not be stopping supplies going in or going out. It should not be disruptive. I can't say strenuously enough that people should not be panic-buying."