Not at all, and to me is a convenient lie from the government with no published data, I wonder why we haven't seen the actual amount of fuel sold being shared anywhere? This problem started months and months ago, there have been insufficient delivery drivers and petrol stations have had far lower stocks than normal. I saw a garage owner explaining he used to be able to order an amount of fuel and it would arrive the next day, but for the last 6 months that's been more like in 5 days and then sometimes it's 1 or 2 days late.
What happened last week was that a system that's under excessive stress then broke. First a few petrol stations had to close due to being completely empty, but then when people went to the next open that ended up empty quickly because it was low on stock, and so on. Sure an amount of excessive purchasing will have happened, but lets be realistic people can't easily buy more than their cars fuel tanks. They can't stockpile it in their garages. I would always fill my tank when empty when I had a fuel car, this is not unusual behavior. If this was really the case we would see everything bounce back and there be a massive surplus over the next weeks, however instead we are drafting in the army and being warned this will last a month.
I'm not sure I really see anything wrong when people who need their car, which is most people, panic a bit when their source of fuel isn't available and they need to sit in huge queues chasing the last dregs at a small number of functional petrol stations. Under normal circumstances there would have been enough fuel at the retailers and then none of this would happen.
The cause is clearly a shortage of lorry drivers, a company (BP) that seemingly made very poor choices about working standards so broke first, and a Government that was incapable of any kind of avoidance action having created a climate that meant European and many British drivers stopped working here.
