Overall UK Road fuel sales have slumped since the introduction of the new Covid-19 restrictions in England, but in Wales they are recovering after the recent fire-break there.
The latest figures from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS), for the whole of the UK, show that average sales for the week ending Sunday 15 November 2020 were at 73% of a typical week before the lockdown in March.
This was a decline of 11% compared with the previous week. Average diesel sales were at 78% and petrol sales were 66% of a typical week before lockdown, with average daily sales per filling station of 8,150 litres of diesel and 4,800 litres of petrol, giving a daily total of 12,950 litres.
However, the decline is not as extreme as during the lockdown. In the eight weeks prior to the lockdown on March 23 average daily sales were 17,690 litres per filling station, with a peak of 20,983 on Friday February 28. After the lockdown they fell rapidly bottoming out at 2,522 litres on Sunday April 12.
From this point they climbed steadily reaching 92% of pre-lockdown levels by the end of September.
The report from BEIS did not give a detailed breakdown of sales for the four home nations, but provided some more information about Wales. Wales entered a fire break on 23 October, ending on 9 November, and during this period average road fuel sales in Wales decreased to around 60% of typical levels. It added that from 9 November average sales in Wales have been increasing.
Meanwhile Scotland and Northern Ireland are facing tougher Covid-19 restrictions.
From 6pm on Friday November 20 more than two million people in 11 council areas in Scotland will move to the country’s toughest level of coronavirus restrictions.
All non-essential shops will have to close until 11 December and there will be bans on travelling outside a council area unless it is essential.
Northern Ireland has just relaxed measures to allow non-essential retail and hospitality to open, but they will have to close again when they enter a new two-week period of tougher Covid-19 lockdown measures from next Friday.
The figures from BEIS are based on end of the day snapshots of petrol and diesel sales and stock levels from a sample of around 4,500 filling stations across Great Britain.
However, the fuel volumes are collected primarily from oil companies, supermarkets and very large independent filling stations, and this results in higher daily average figures than if all independent volumes were included.
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