It doesn’t seem like five minutes since we reported on the last crazy UK car story, but now another has cropped up. This is related to the cost of fuel in the country, after the Iran war pushed fuel prices to huge levels.
The BBC has reported that over £200,000 worth of fuel has been stolen from UK gas stations since the war began. That is roughly $269,000 in stolen fuel thanks to how high prices have become in recent months, according to industry analysis.
The report stated that incidents of fuel being taken from forecourts without payment have risen by a fifth in the last five months. These figures were released by Forecourt Eye. UK drivers have had to pay often ludicrously high prices since the war began, and stolen fuel incidents have risen by nearly 50 percent since the conflict started.
It isn’t just the theft of fuel that is the problem. There have been a huge number of incidents reported involving abuse, intimidation and violence from customers who are frustrated at the price of petrol. Those working at gas stations in the country have had to endure all sorts of unruly behaviour.
How Bad Has the Fuel Situation Been in the UK?
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Forecourt Eye said the value of the stolen fuel has risen by 48 percent compared to the five months before the war began. The value has reached a daily average of around £194,000, highlighting just how expensive it has become. Some 550 forecourts were sampled to see how much has been stolen.
This was extrapolated to the other 8,359 forecourts in the country. In terms of incidents of fuel being stolen, the numbers state 2,872 daily incidents on average at the gas stations in the UK. That is up from around 2,400 from before the war began, and the incidents themselves cover a wide array of reasons and scenarios, some of which are quite remarkable.
The reasons for theft include people simply getting in their cars and driving off, while some instances have seen people simply state they had no way of paying after they had filled the car up. When it comes to the volume of fuel stolen, that rose by 24 percent, up from 87,000 litres to a staggering 108,900 litres at the forecourts.
What Is Being Done To Solve the Crisis?
Forecourt Eye has said it is partnering up with facial recognition company Facewatch to try and solve the problem. It is going to offer more than 2,000 retailers free access to crime reporting technology, beginning in the autumn of 2026. Yet it seems some security measures aren’t working.
Shailesh Parekh, who owns six forecourts under the Midlands Motor Fuels banner, has claimed he has more CCTV cameras than Birmingham Airport per square foot, but people don’t care and still steal the fuel anyway. He told the BBC that businesses almost had to just accept that it was going to be a problem. Facial recognition technology might help, but the forecourts still seem to be facing an uphill battle.