Recent Fuel Cards News

The AA calls for an inquiry over cost of diesel - 25/01/2012

Motoring organisations around Europe are to step up their campaign for an investigation by Brussels into Diesel Prices/Petrol Prices and market manipulation by energy companies as the cost of diesel at Britain's pumps nears record levels. The AA said it would meet its counterparts on the continent early next month to find a way of easing the burden of rising fuel costs on hard-pressed consumers. "There is a lack of transparency in the fuel market, which is of major concern to all of us.  Rising fuel costs are bad for the wider economy, driving up the price of food and other commodities.” Large oil companies argue that they earn little profit from forecourt sales and make the vast bulk of their money out of "upstream" oil production...

Drivers are to face chronic fuel shortages and soaring petrol prices as the UK's biggest refinery goes bankrupt - 24/01/2012

Motorists face chronic fuel shortages along with soaring Diesel prices and Petrol prices at the pumps after one of Britain’s biggest fuel refineries went bust, petrol retailers have warned. Forecourt bosses and MPs said there was a risk of parts of the South East ‘grinding to a halt’ amid reports production had stopped at the Coryton refinery, which supplies around a fifth of the fuel in the region and 10 per cent of the UK’s supplies. The closure of the giant Essex refinery also threatens to push up pump prices as supplies diminish. The warning came as the refinery’s Swiss parent company Petroplus said talks with its lenders had broken down and it would be filing for insolvency with the loss of up to 1,000 UK jobs. Petrol retailers w...

Petrol tanker drivers take strike action - 24/01/2012

More than 80 fuel tanker drivers at the ConocoPhillips oil refinery at Immingham, North East Lincolnshire have begun a week-long strike. They claim their employer, haulage firm Wincanton, is trying to reduce their pay by as much as 20%. But Wincanton said the industrial action was "wholly unnecessary" and could ultimately put jobs at risk. Similar action is taking place at depots in Kingsbury in Warwickshire and at Stockton-on-Tees. The Unite union is warning that deliveries to Jet petrol stations could be disrupted. The drivers voted by four to one last week to take industrial action, with 95% taking part in the ballot. Dave Monaghan, from Unite, claimed Wincanton wanted to "annihilate" the pay and conditions of drivers. ...

New technology for motorway crashes. - 23/01/2012

New technology is being brought in to reduce the long tailbacks that follow motorway crashes. Image scanners will generate an instant 3D image of an entire crash site, so that instead of having to build up an image laboriously, section by section, investigators can view the whole site remotely on a computer. This is expected to cut 39 minutes off the average amount of time it takes before damaged vehicles can be removed and traffic flow resumed. It has been estimated that in 2010 there were 18,000 partial or full motorway closures lasting a combined total of 20,000 hours, at huge cost to the economy. The Department for Transport announced that 27 police forces in England have been given £2.7m to buy 37 new scanners. The grants...

Fleet managers urged to monitor drivers. - 20/01/2012

Many fleet businesses are being urged to monitor their fleet drivers after a breath-test crackdown over Christmas and New Year led to an unprecedented number of people being arrested. Figures show Nearly 157,000 people were tested between December 1 and January 1, this led to More than 7,200 people in England and Wales being arrested. The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) says young drivers had a higher rate of offending at 5.7%, compared with 4% of over-25s. Safety campaigners say the data shows warnings about drink and drug-driving are not working. AA president Edmund King said he had hoped that positive tests across the UK would be lower this year but admitted the weather had played a part in previous figures. He...