Fuel Chaos Spreads Angry Demands for European Governments to Lower Gas Costs

By Lucrezia Cuen

L O N D O N, Sept. 8  Fed up with soaring fuel costs, European motorists are taking to the streets  setting up blockades, picketing fuel depots, threatening strikes and angrily demanding their governments reduce prices at the pumps.

Blockades by French truckers have strangled the fuel supply and paralyzed the country. Eight out of 10 petrol stations are without fuel, a condition that has disrupted air traffic, school buses and garbage collections. The French fuel crisis is spreading across Europe as motorists cross borders to seek out fuel. Meanwhile, governments in places like Greece and Poland are facing fuel troubles of their own. (Magellan Geographix/ ABCNEWS.com) British truck drivers and farmers demonstrating at a Shell Oil Co. refinery in Cheshire in northwest England have blocked tankers from leaving to make deliveries. A fuel boycott has erupted in Spain and Greek taxi drivers are threatening to strike. Fuel Costs at Nearly $5 a Gallon European drivers are accustomed to paying up to four times as much as Americans due to fuel taxes  which can add 80 percent to the retail price. But theyve been hit with a one-two punch. Rising world oil prices paired with a fall in the euro has gas prices climbing to almost $4.80 a gallon in some areas. Now is the time to stand up and be counted, cried one protester camped out at the Shell refinery in Stanlow, Cheshire. Angry farmers on board tractors have blocked access to the refinery. Fuel costs on farms have trebled in 14 months, said another demonstrator.

Fuse Lit in France The revolt began in France when disgruntled truck drivers set up blockades of refineries to protest rising costs of diesel fuel. The protest quickly spread to include the countrys farmers, ambulance and taxi drivers. With the country at a near-standstill, the French government caved in  agreeing to make concessions and put a freeze on previously set tax increases.

One truckers' union has called for an end to the blockade, but others have rejected the concessions as too small. As the fuel chaos worsens, French Interior Minister Daniel Vaillant has ordered riot police to guard the entrance to the Channel Tunnel to prevent protesters from blocking harbors and preventing travel between the Continent and Britain. Farmers in tractors and combine harvesters parked across both lanes of the motorway between Calais and Boulogne, just north of the Channel Tunnel. This fuel blockade has really screwed things up, said Bob Butler, an American tourist traveling in France. I couldnt even catch a train from Cannes to Monaco today. As the pumps run dry in France, long lines are forming at gas stations in Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Germany as French motorists cross borders to seek out fuel. Oil prices have more than tripled since hitting a 12-year low of less than $11 a barrel in December 1998. Spains secretary of state of the economy, Josi Folgado, echoed the feelings of many European governments saying its OPECs responsibility to boost oil output and spare national governments the financial burden of lowering fuel taxes. Leaders of Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries are meeting Sunday in Vienna, Austria.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/fuel000908.html

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), September 08, 2000

Answers

Out rage in Europe? Where is the out rage in USA? Is this because the problems in foreign countries have been on going since the roll over and the ripple effect has not reached our shores yet? Seems I have heard this ripple effect in predections from last year. The Y2K fiasco would start overseas and the ripple effect would hit us the 4th quarter of Year 2000. Anyone else remember these predictions?

-- Ruth Angell (bar@bpsinet.com), September 08, 2000.