Drivers waiting more than an hour to fill up as 90-car queues form at petrol stations

Drivers in the UK have been asked not to panic buy petrol in anticipation of rising prices due to the conflict in Iran, so naturally some petrol stations have lengthy queues.

The US and Israel struck Iran, which responded by firing upon several countries in retaliation and they have closed a shipping lane which is important to the global oil supply.

As a result the prices of oil and gas have risen which means higher petrol prices for people's cars, and naturally some of Britain's motorists have ignored the message that there's no need to panic buy.

According to the Metro there are long queues of cars outside some petrol stations in the UK, though Forecourt Trader says many of these stations pictured with long queues were Costco sites where petrol is generally cheaper anyway and are usually buy anyway.

They spoke to a number of petrol station operators who said they had seen a higher volume of business but it's been a 'constant flow, rather than having people queueing out onto the road'.

People have been told there's no need to panic buy, so guess what they've started doing (Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

RAC head of police Simon Williams said conflict in the Middle East had 'the potential to push up pump prices in the UK', but stressed it was 'not a certainty' and the oil price would have to rise a lot and stay that way for it to have a major impact on motorists.

"We really shouldn’t see a shock jump in prices at the pumps as wholesale fuel costs had only been rising gradually in recent weeks," he said.

"Even though the price of dated Brent crude rose by five dollars a barrel yesterday to 78 dollars, the impact of this shouldn’t be felt for over a week."

He also encouraged retailers not to crank up the price of petrol they already had for sale on forecourts.

Meanwhile, AA spokesperson Luke Bosdet pointed out 'pump averages today are still below where they started the year' and reminded Brits 'petrol is almost 6.5p a litre cheaper than this time last year'.

The US war with Iran has disrupted 20 percent of the global supply of oil and gas, leading to concerns over price rises (Contributor/Getty Images)

"The fuel trade has reported some increased demand, which was expected, but drivers in general are heeding advice to stick to their usual refuelling routines," he said.

"There’s no point wasting time, fuel and money queuing when drivers don’t need to."

However, AA president Edmund King told The Times recently that conflict in the Middle East and disruption to the supply of oil and gas would 'inevitably lead to price hikes', though he said if 'record prices' were coming it would be 'within the next 10 to 12 days' we'd start seeing it rather than right now.

The UK has a petrol supply so Britain is not about to run out of fuel, though one of the ironies of people panic buying to avoid falling foul of a shortage is that they run the risk of making supply issues worse for a time.

We all remember the mad, undignified scramble for toilet roll during the pandemic when it turns out there would have been enough if people hadn't acted like headless chickens.