Emergency services in Oxfordshire are drawing up plans to protect themselves against fuel shortages if blockades of oil refineries start again, writes Victoria Owen.

As protesters threaten further action against high fuel prices including a slow-moving cavalcade from Tyneside to London ambulance and fire crews are preparing for the worst.

Paramedics said they had their own stocks of fuel for emergency calls and had a contingency plan in place.

Oxfordshire Ambulance Trust strategic planning director Robert Seaman said: "As with the last shortage, we have got rights to preferential sales at certain petrol stations. We have been working on our plans since the last dispute.

"We have a lot of confidence that we won't be badly affected."

Firefighters are also confident that their own fuel stocks would last through a repeat of the September fuel shortages. Assistant chief fire officer John Hurren said: "The only fear we have is firemen getting to work, especially part-time retained staff. But they will be given special identification so that they can use petrol station sites for preferential service workers."

Police are not making special plans at present but a spokesman urged the public not to stockpile supplies.

He said: "Stockpiling is very dangerous as people can use inappropriate containers. It is dangerous to yourself, your family and your neighbours. If someone's garage goes up in a petrol fire, it won't just be them who are injured."

Meanwhile, county hauliers said they would not be hoarding extra diesel in case of a second crisis which could start on November 13.

Driver Mark Phillips, at Bicester-based Atkinson and Sanders, said there was very little that the firm could do.

He said: "We don't have bunkering facilities and there's not a lot small operators like us can do."

Oxford firm Unipart, which makes long-distance deliveries around the UK, plans to use delivery lorries frugally and to maximum benefit on each trip. It added there had been an increase in demand for the large fuel containers it makes.