| Running dry by Michael Graeme Looking back at the British fuel crisis of September 2000 |
Running dry by Michael Graeme In September 2000, a remarkable chain of events culminated in the total exhaustion of petrol supplies in the United Kingdom. Over the period of just a few days, every petrol station in the country was emptied, with no indication of when stocks would be replenished. Those of us old enough to have been driving in the 1970's will remember having to queue for rationed supplies. But this was different; on this occasion there was no time to consider rationing and very quickly nothing left to queue for anyway as virtually overnight, the petrol stations were closed. There was at once the sense that a clock had begun ticking, counting down to the moment when the remaining fuel in our vehicles ran dry. And it struck me, when that happened, the nation would be facing a crisis deeper than anything I could remember, because everything would simply stop. The crisis was born out of discontent at the level of fuel taxation, resulting in prices for petrol and diesel, which at the time were the highest in the western world. Back then, the average price of a UK gallon of unleaded petrol was £3.64, of which 75% was a tax levied by the government. The cost of fuel was allegedly having a crippling effect on the profitability of businesses whose primary service was a means of motorised transport. The most vocal of the effected business groups were the road hauliers and the farmers who claimed their profit margins had been reduced to below subsistence levels as a direct result of taxation on fuel. It was true that fuel prices had been rising steadily throughout the nineties, mainly as the result of an annual increase in taxation. Ironically though this fuel tax escalator, as it was known, had been abolished by the Labour government in the late nineties. However, subsequent increases in the price of crude oil to around $30 a barrel had succeeded in pushing up fuel prices to what, at the turn of the millennium, had apparently become breaking point. Rumblings of discontent first reached our TV screens in the summer of 2000 with a campaign called Dump the Pump. The idea was to persuade the public to stop filling up their cars with fuel on Mondays and thereby disrupt the management of re-suppling petrol stations. The subtlety of this plan was lost on most people and support was sporadic. In the end its effect was more to heighten awareness of a growing discontent, rather than to cause any disruption to the oil companies. Dump the Pump was followed by more direct action, again undertaken by road hauliers and farmers, who descended upon our cities and major roads in order to drive their enormous vehicles en-mass and at leisurely speeds. The resulting chaos ensured coverage in the newspapers and on the TV, and this further heightened public awareness. The aim of all this was to put pressure on the government to cut the level of tax on fuel. But taxes were not cut, nor were any promises of future reductions made, so at the end of the summer, road hauliers and farmers turned their attention to the nation's oil refineries, and the seeds of the crisis were sown. The Stanlow refinery in Cheshire, in the North West of England is one of around 20 major petroleum distribution centres in Britain. It dispatches an average of 400 tankers every day, each of which carries around 35,000 litres of fuel, in order to replenish stocks at filling stations throughout the region. On Thursday 9th September 2000, a small gathering of farmers and road hauliers took place at the gates. It seemed an informal and good-natured affair - none of the shouting nor the otherwise aggressive behaviour we had come to associate with industrial action. I believe it was for this reason it failed to immediately attract the attention of the nation's media, but little did we know the farmers and road hauliers had descended upon the Achilles heel of the country and were about to apply a gentle but devastatingly effective pressure. The protesters asked the tanker drivers not to leave the depot. There were rumours of intimidation, but the evidence is lacking. Nor it seemed were managers of the plant keen on forcing the drivers to break through the blockade. Largely this was not possible anyway, since the drivers were either employed by independent haulage contractors or were self employed and sympathetic to the protester's cause. Whatever the reason, the drivers didn't man their tankers and the fuel stayed where it was. By Saturday the protest had still not attracted much attention, even though similar actions had by now begun at other distribution centres. There seemed no cause for concern. After all, the terribly bitter and often violent miners disputes in the nineteen eighties had held back supplies of coal at the collieries for months, yet the nation's power supplies had remained unaffected. But this was different. I heard rumours of petrol stations running dry at lunch time on Sunday 12th of September and by Monday evening, hardly a petrol station in the country remained open. Within four days Britain had apparently run out of petrol. The swiftness with which the protest took effect caught everyone by surprise and betrayed how little fuel the country holds in reserve, beyond its distribution centres. There was immediate panic buying of petrol, long queues of vehicles, squeezing every last drop of fuel into their tanks. Indeed, at the first hint of trouble, it's fair to say the petrol that normally resides in vast tanks beneath the garage forecourts was transferred into the tanks of private and commercial vehicles by a nation determined not to be caught out. The immediate concern of most ordinary citizens was to make sure they had enough petrol for the daily commute to work. Thirty years ago, this would not have been the foremost thing in people's minds since up until that time, social patterns had led many to live within easy reach of their workplace. But a growing reliance on motor vehicles has enabled people to live further away from their jobs, without needing to consider the safety net of the public transport system. Also, the nature of employment has changed since the seventies. Our greater mobility, as a result of the car, has led employers to demand greater mobility from their employees, routinely dispatching them to far flung offices and depots around the country. And there is also very little stability in the labour market with people being encouraged or forced to change jobs every few years, which in turn forces even more reliance on the flexibility and the greater mobility afforded by the motor car. In practice this means using our homes as a base and commuting whatever distance is necessary in our pursuit of wages, rather than uproot homes and families every time we have to move jobs. As the crisis began to bite, it was interesting to note how many people found themselves stranded in rural Britain, in villages and small commuter towns, but to say the nation ground to a halt would be an exaggeration. The public transport system continued to run, enabling those who normally relied upon it to commute just the same. Indeed the line followed by the nation's employers was that crisis or no crisis, so long as the public transport system continued to run, employees were expected to arrive as normal, and in good time. In a sense this seemed fair, if somewhat unsympathetic, especially since if this proved impossible employees were expected to take time off as part of their holiday entitlements - suggesting that the gains in flexibility over the past decade have been rather one-sided. In my own case, I travel seventeen miles from rural Lancashire, to the urban fringes of Greater Manchester every day, for an eight thirty a.m. start - a journey that normally takes around thirty minutes. My knowledge of the public transport systems covering this route were vague and had always been dismissed as irrelevant anyway on the grounds of cost, complexity and the excessive amount of time it would take to cover the distance. As the week of the crisis progressed, however, and my own fuel reserves ran low I was forced to take a closer look at what exactly was on offer. The first problem was knowing where to start. Timetables and bus numbers were a thing of my dim and distant past when the commute had been a couple of miles to school and the choice had been bus or bicycle. The bicycle was briefly considered for the independence it afforded, but I've not ridden a bicycle more than a couple of miles for decades - and I simply wasn't up to it. Instead, I turned to the Internet. There had been much talk since the election of a Labour government in 1997 of the creation of an 'integrated public transport system.' I knew there was no direct bus or train link, so I would need information regarding the times for trains and busses in order to make my connections and I would need the information quickly, out of office hours - a seemingly impossible task one might think. However, I discovered an Internet site which enabled me to put in my starting point, my destination and my desired arrival time. It then calculated the necessary combination of available trains and busses I required to complete my journey in the most efficient way. Within seconds this site had delivered two options - an impressive achievement and an indication that some genuine steps have indeed been made in an attempt to run an integrated service. What was less impressive however was that the quickest of these options would have taken two hours and even travelling by the earliest available option, I would arrive at work an hour late. Travelling by car and accounting for fuel and depreciation, my journey costs are about 25p per mile, so my commute to work costs £8.75 including return. By public transport, the fastest means of getting there was by train and this would have cost in the region of £15. So the car is much less expensive, especially if you can share the journey with another driver. It's also far more economical with my personal time, compressing a possible two hour journey into just over thirty minutes - it also has the not inconsiderable advantage of getting me there on time. So, in my own case, realistically, there is no alternative to my car. The crisis lasted about a week. Just as I was on my last dregs of petrol, the tankers began moving again. No concessions were made and the protests broke up peacefully, but I can't help wondering what would have happened if they hadn't. What if it had gone on longer? What if the crisis had been caused not by protest but by a major problem with supply? It's interesting to follow this through for we already know half the story. At the first hint of trouble, within a few days, most petrol stations will be emptied. There will be a few exceptions: Certain petrol stations will close even though they still hold substantial supplies. These stations will remain closed until the crisis deepens. Then they will open and sell rationed amounts of petrol at greatly inflated prices. Other petrol stations will be designated for emergency services only - police, fire and ambulance. Certain key professionals such as teachers and doctors will be issued cards enabling them to buy limited amounts of petrol from these designated stations. For the rest of us, fuel for personal use, and that includes getting to work, will simply not be available. Nor can we expect our employers to be sympathetic. We will be expected to arrive in good time, either making use of the public transport system, or where that is not possible, bunking down with amenable friends or colleagues who happen to live closer to work. The Internet will spread rumours of isolated deliveries to petrol stations. Then we'll waste what fuel we've managed to conserve in chasing these rumours, only to find them unfounded or to sit in long queues for petrol that dries up as we approach the pump. The nation's press will feast upon the situation, embellishing it here and there and creating crises where there are none. They might speculate for example that the price of food will have to rise, that certain commodities may become scarce as delivery wagons fail to meet their normal schedules. This will result in a run on the supermarkets. Shelves will be cleared of staple items like bread and milk and eggs. Pictures will appear in the national and international press, forlorn images of a country in terminal decline. In short it would be a disaster and the experience of the fuel crisis has taught us that it would happen very quickly indeed. My own estimate from normality to a state of emergency is two weeks. And the solution? Forty years ago, the supply of petroleum was irrelevant to the ordinary citizen. Few people owned motor cars. Most worked within easy reach of their homes - a short bus or train ride. They travelled less and in order to make what journeys they needed they organised their lives around a publicly owned, public transport system. Indeed houses were bought taking into consideration that the bus stop was on the main route into town, or the railway station on the local branch line was just a short walk away. But it's wrong to think we can ever go back to those days. The branch lines have been taken up and they'll never be put back again. Trains and busses are in the hands of private companies whose aim is to make a profit. This means the public transport system has, over the years shrivelled up to meet the level of demand which is low, because private car ownership is high, and rising. So, do we ban the car? Do we make people live next door to their workplace? Do we ban all business travel and conduct our meetings over the video-link or the telephone? Of course not. In fact there is no short term solution to our dependency on petroleum. We are a petroleum driven society and nothing else will drive it at quite the same pace we seem to require these days. What is needed is a social change, but such changes take place gradually, over generations in response to an external stimulus. What we need quite simply is an alternative to petroleum, ideally something cleaner and more efficient. Actually, what the citizen needs, as they say, is more choice. He needs not one car but two - one driven by petrol,.... .....and the other by electricity. Copyright © M Graeme 2002 |