Scotland
In Edinburgh, a dozen lorries caused disruption on main routes into the city in an unofficial fuel protest.
The action came ahead of a planned demonstration today, when scores of haulage and farm vehicles are expected to bring the city to a standstill.
Yesterday's protest saw lorries moving at a walking pace on some of the key routes into Edinburgh at rush hour. The city bypass was badly congested for several hours.
A spokesman for the drivers, Mark Williams, said: "The key argument is to get the fuel prices back down in line with other European countries. Just now it is massively out of order. We can't accept the crippling fuel prices any longer."
However, the Scotland Office minister Brian Wilson condemned the protest. "Stopping other people getting to work and forcing old ladies to stand at bus stops, leave children waiting for buses in the rain - I don't think there's anything to be gained from any of that and I don't really think it is a very good idea," he said.
Phil Flanders, of the Road Haulage Association in Scotland, said he was disappointed at the unofficial action, and concerned that it might alienate the public ahead of today's larger protest.
But he said there could be no let up in the pressure for fairer prices. "We're not wasting our time. If we just sit back and accept it then hauliers and farmers will go out of business."
Meanwhile, petrol stations across Dumfries and Galloway reported panic buying by motorists, with some expecting their pumps to run dry by the end of the day.
Police were also on alert in Grangemouth for possible disruption at the main petro-chemical complex there.
Kirsty Scott
North-east
Five men and three lorries threw most of north-eastern England into chaos yesterday, helped by a region-wide outbreak of panic petrol buying.
The group reversed their trucks into the entrance of the Conoco and Total refineries at Immingham on the Humber, throttling the supply of fuel to garages from Nottingham to the North Yorkshire border.
Similar pickets on Tyneside completed the job for Tyne and Wear and Northumbria, where police held an emergency meeting to keep patrol cars on the road. Police drivers in Cleveland and North Yorkshire were also ordered to limit patrols to safeguard fuel supplies.
Officers were called to a garage in Derby where prices were hiked to £2 a litre as scores of drivers from the petrol-starved north-west drove there to find supplies.
No action was taken, however, against 80 trucks which reduced the motorway system in Yorkshire to chaos by driving three abreast at under 25mph around the junction of the M1 and M62 motorways.
Public support for the blockades was widespread in spite of the misery involved. Peter Turner, the managing director of Rix Petroleum in Hull whose depot was also sealed off, said: "We're the wrong target but we sympathise with the all the farmers and hauliers, some of whom are our customers and friends."
At the Hull garage 200 metres from the home of the deputy prime minister, John Prescott - who was celebrating 30 years of being MP for East Hull last night - the "no fuel" signs went up at 2pm.
Martin Wainwright
North-west and north Wales
The north-west of England was running out of petrol last night as blockades of refineries and terminals spread.
Filling stations across a swath of country from the Welsh border to the Pennines locked their pumps as tanks ran dry. Long queues formed where supplies were available.
There was no petrol in an area extending 20 miles south of Manchester city centre and drivers were finding it increasingly difficult to find fuel in the north of the city. Some drivers complained of steep price rises.
Traffic on the M6 slowed as drivers joined queues for fuel at Charnock Richard services in Lancashire.
More than 150 Liverpool taxi drivers supported pickets at the Stanlow oil refinery in Cheshire, where the blockades began last Thursday. Taxi drivers also caused gridlock in Liverpool last night by driving their cabs at a snail's pace through the city centre.
Brynle Williams, leader of the Stanlow protesters, threatened to blockade the port of Holyhead if refinery managers continued to supply fuel to Seacat ferries.
"We don't like the idea of Irish drivers coming over here with their cheap diesel then working two or three days and bringing over their cheap meat, robbing us of a living," he said, adding that Irish drivers filled their tanks with fuel bought in Ireland at half British prices.
In Trafford Park, Manchester, 30 hauliers, including reinforcements from Shropshire, continued to prevent fuel leaving the giant terminal which supplies Esso, Texaco and Elf outlets in the region.
Last night the North West Wales NHS Trust cancelled all non-emergency operations due to the crisis. Appointments at clinics apart from at Gwynedd Hospital at Bangor and Llandudno general hospital are also being cancelled.
Day-hospital facilities are being cancelled from today because ambulances will carry out emergency work only.
David Ward and Helen Carter
South-west and south Wales
Desperate motorists were being turned away from petrol stations across south Wales yesterday as a combination of panic buying and continued blockades at oil refineries and fuel depots in the region saw the pumps dry up.
Motorway drivers faced the prospect of not reaching their destinations after a number of service stations along the busy M4 corridor ran out of fuel. In Swansea supplies of unleaded petrol have been used up. Garages were rapidly running out of four star and there was no petrol or diesel available at any of the city's supermarket service stations. It was a similar tale in Newport with long queues forming outside the one Shell garage that still had supplies yesterday.
As truckers continued to blockade the Elf oil refinery at Milford Haven the company conceded that almost all its service stations in south Wales had run out of stocks. It said that some of the larger supermarket filling stations it services require two tanker loads of fuel a day to keep going.
Blockades were also continuing at the Texaco refinery at Pembroke Dock and at a key fuel distribution centre in Cardiff. Oil company staff and police said the blockades - involving just 20 vehicles at the two west Wales refineries - were orderly but there had been no movement of any tankers following discussions with the protesters.
In the south-west of England, where the Asda-WalMart hypermarket near Bristol was forced to close during the day, protesters were continuing to prevent supplies leaving Esso's Avonmouth fuel depot.
The protest was last night extended to Plymouth where militant fishermen plan to join a blockade of Cattedown Wharf, the distribution depot for Shell, BP and Esso in the area.
Elsewhere, angry truckers caused chaos in Dorset by travelling in convoy at 5mph through Poole. Among those caught in the snarl up were 30 long distance drivers, believed to be a mixture of French and British who arrived at Poole harbour on the early morning ferry from France.
Geoffrey Gibbs
London and the south-east
In the south of England hauliers and farmers have been working in shifts to stop tankers leaving refineries as panic buying led to fears that almost half the petrol stations in the London area could run out of fuel by tomorrow.
BP's biggest refinery, at Coryton, Essex, was blockaded by protesters, while four other distribution terminals and refineries in the Grays area were also picketed.
Fifty drivers belonging to the Kent Hauliers and Farmers, a group set up to co-ordinate the protests, met at Thurrock Services on the M25 at 3am yesterday morning to decide on a plan of action. They blockaded sites, including the Esso Petroleum Bitumen Depot in Purfleet, where a lorry - bedecked with a Union flag bearing the slogan "Cut UK Diesel/Tax Down" - blocked the entrance.
Moorthy Patel, from the Shell garage in Seven Sisters, north London, said: "If there is no delivery within the next 24 hours, we could run out."
But Barbara Peen of BP said there was no real cause for concern yet. "There is no reason why London garages should be affected," she said. "The shortages are a result of panic buying over the weekend."
Meanwhile Kent fire brigade has cut all non-emergency calls and community fire safety work for its engines for the duration of the protests.
Jamie Wilson
The Midlands
The Staffordshire Ambulance Service yesterday imposed a speed limit of 55mph on all vehicles involved in non-emergency journeys to conserve petrol as the fuel crisis began to hit home in the Midlands.
As protesters closed Britain's largest inland oil terminal, at Kingsbury in the West Midlands, filling stations in the region reported severe shortages. Despite the introduction of the speed limit a spokesman for Staffordshire Ambulance Service reassured the public that its current petrol supplies would last for another 11 days and the measure had been taken as a precaution.
An Esso garage in Birmingham city centre was forced to ration petrol to £10 per person after queues had begun forming from the early morning, and others were forced to close after running out of fuel.
Jamie Wilson
