A petrol station ran dry of unleaded as panic-buying gripped parts of Ashford.

In other stations, motorists queued from the crack of dawn in a rush to fill their cars because of the Grangemouth refinery strike.

The Northdown Service Station on the A20 at Charing sold the last drop of unleaded as sales of petrol doubled over three days.

Manager Steve Blake said: "We completely ran out of unleaded fuel by Monday morning.

"It seems people were panicking. It was all self-perservation and people felt if you don’t get it now you won’t get it at all.

"But if people keep filling up with £60 of fuel it is going to hit the industry hard."

Between Friday morning and Sunday evening the garage had sold 14,000 litres of fuel, when it would normally sell 6,000 over that period.

The garage did not run out of diesel and fresh supplies of unleaded came in on Tuesday.

Meanwhile the Tesco filling station at Park Farm, Ashford, put up signs refusing the sale of fuel in canisters motorists swarmed in over the weekend.

Customer services assistant Yvonne Taylor said: "On Saturday customers were queuing up from 6.30am when the station did not open until 7am.

"There were queues for the best part of the day"

The Government had warned motorist not to panic buy because of the two-day strike at the Scottish refinery. Full story in this Thursday's Kentish Express