Motorists were pictured pushing a car into a petrol forecourt as the fuel shortage - spurred by nationwide panic buying - continues.
Chaotic scenes unfolded at a Texaco garage in south London on Sunday as people queued up in the hopes of filling their vehicles ahead of the start of the week.
And after one car conked out just yards from the pumps, several people leapt into action and rolled it forwards.
BP announced on Thursday evening that it was closing some pumps and rationing petrol and diesel because of a lack of lorry drivers, despite reassurances from the Government and sector experts that there was no shortage of fuel.
This led to many motorists panic-buying fuel over the weekend with the company then confirming on Sunday that nearly a third of its British petrol stations had run out of the two main grades of fuel.
Downing Street suspended competition law in an attempt to get a grip of the shortages.
The decision comes after Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng met with oil companies and retailers yesterday with thousands of petrol stations running dry.
A scuffle at a north London petrol station was posted on social media as motorists waited to fill up their tanks in a bout of "frenzied buying".
Mr Kwarteng has opted to temporarily exempt the industry from the Competition Act to allow it to share information so it can target areas where fuel supply is running low.
The triggering of what is known as the Downstream Oil Protocol comes as the Petrol Retailers Association (PRA) warned that as many as two-thirds of its membership of nearly 5,500 independent outlets was out of fuel, with the rest of them "partly dry and running out soon".
Mr Kwarteng said: "We have long-standing contingency plans in place to work with industry so that fuel supplies can be maintained and deliveries can still be made in the event of a serious disruption.
"While there has always been and continues to be plenty of fuel at refineries and terminals, we are aware that there have been some issues with supply chains.
"This is why we will enact the Downstream Oil Protocol to ensure industry can share vital information and work together more effectively to ensure disruption is minimised."
In a separate joint statement from the likes of Shell, ExxonMobile and Greenergy, the industry reiterated that the pressures on supply were being caused by "temporary spikes in customer demand, not a national shortage of fuel".
PRA chairman Brian Madderson told the BBC the shortages were down to "panic buying, pure and simple", with priority by oil companies being afforded to keeping motorway service station pumps topped up.
The intervention comes less than 24 hours after the Government announced a temporary visa scheme that will see 5,000 foreign HGV drivers and 5,500 poultry workers allowed into the UK on three-month contracts up to Christmas Eve in an attempt to keep supermarket shelves stocked with turkeys and tackle fuel delivery difficulties.
But retailers warned that the decision to relax immigration rules to fix supply chain issues was "too little, too late" to keep shop shelves fully stocked this Christmas.
French European Affairs Minister Clement Beaune said on Monday that the petrol stations problems currently faced by Britain reflected the "intellectual fraud" that was Brexit.
"Every day, we see the intellectual fraud that was Brexit," Beaune told France 2 television.
