EJ Explains| Why is Britain out of gas?

UK is facing a severe gas shortage with 'out of gas signs' across petrol pumps and long queues of cars looking to tank up.

U.K. is short tens of thousands of truckers, due to a perfect storm of factors including the coronavirus pandemic, an aging workforce and an exodus of foreign workers following Britain’s Brexit departure from the European Union last year.

The UK had lost 72,000 drivers between the second quarter of 2019 and the same period in 2021, mostly due to people returning to the EU after Brexit.

The Petrol Retailers Association in UK has warned that as many as two-thirds of its membership of nearly 5,500 independent outlets are out of fuel, with the rest of them "partly dry and running out soon". BP Plc said it had been forced to shut down a handful of its 1,200 U.K. fuel stations and restrict supplies to others because it didn’t have enough drivers for its delivery trucks.

In a joint statement from companies including Shell, ExxonMobil and Greenergy, the industry reiterated that pressures on supply were being caused by "temporary spikes in customer demand - not a national shortage of fuel".