Forecourt fuel sales took a major step last week in their recovery since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, with a near 5% week-on-week increase to 88% of pre-lockdown levels for the week ending August 2.
The latest weekly figures from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (DBEIS) showed there was an increase of 4.8% compared with the previous seven days, with average diesel sales at 88% and petrol sales also at 88% of a typical week before lockdown, with average daily sales of 9,120 litres of diesel and 6,370 litres of petrol.
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.
Since then average sales have climbed steadily, and for the week ending August 2 there was a daily average of 15,570 litres.
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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