A female driver has been spotted pumping petrol into water bottles she got from a bin as Brits flock to forecourts across the country amid fears of a fuel shortage.
Up to nine in ten British stations were closed today after frenzied Brits drained stations over the weekend to fill up for the coming week.
Many key workers - including doctors, nurses and care workers - were unable to fill their tanks, forcing them to work from home.
Brits have been spotted fighting over the pumps, loading up boots with jerry cans, and trudging through towns on foot to get petrol without wasting any.
Sign fitter Gavin Rabbitt, 47, spotted a female motorist buying in to the panic at a Shell garage at Cobham Services on the M25 yesterday.
Gavin, from Tonbridge in Kent, said he "couldn't believe" the woman's "stupidity" as he watched her pick two 1.5-litre water bottles from a bin and fill them with fuel.
Carrying fuel in plastic containers is not advised as over time the bottle can degrade - causing dangerous leaks.
Gavin said: "I thought 'I can't believe the stupidity of this woman.'
"This is the kind of thing that causes the problem. People filling up things they shouldn't be filling up and no one else can get the fuel because of other people's stupidity.
"The queue was all the way down the slip road. We were queuing for about 20 to 30 minutes. She was all blasé and doing it right in front of me. It's ludicrous."
In Birmingham one man said thieves have been avoiding the forecourts altogether and siphoning petrol from cars - and even drilling straight into the tanks.
Britain's petrol giants foresee an easing of the crisis over the coming days.
They predict once people have a full tank, demand for fuel will begin to drop.
The Government say there are "ample stocks" in the UK, denying the initial reports of a shortage.
Drivers don't see the end of the crisis coming by midweek.
One driver said a delivery driver shortage won't be "miraculously resolved" within days.
Some London stations were even running out of fuel before the crisis, he added.
Others fear driver confidence will drop, causing repeated returns to forecourts to top up before their needle drops "below a quarter".
Some drivers reportedly slept in their cars overnight in snaking queues stretching for miles outside stations.
Electrician Roland McKibbin, 31, said he couldn't go to work today today as he there was no fuel at four stations in his local area of Beckenham, south-east London.
The "panic-buying idiots" have "lost me income", he said.
"And directly taken food off the table for my wife and five-year-old son, because I can't wire people's houses from home, unfortunately."
Trying to find somewhere to fill up wasted about 15 miles of fuel, he added.
He had to turn back as he was "on fumes".
BP announced on Thursday evening 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 has 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.
