To the United Kingdom, where panic about a shortage of oil supplies has continued among motorists, ahead of a planned strike on Sunday at the country's largest oil refineries.

The British government has urged drivers not to hoard petrol, although many stations have set purchase limits.

John Hutton is the business secretary of the government.

"We've done everything we possibly can at every stage in this dispute to try and bring the parties together, and when the dispute became inevitable, to try and make sure that Scotland had sufficient fuel and diesel and petrol it needs to get on with its daily business, and that remains our absolute focus."

The two-day strike over pensions, set to begin on Sunday at the Grangemouth oil refinery in central Scotland, is expected to disrupt energy supplies and hinder delivery of Britain's North Sea oil.

On Saturday, unions and management continued to blame each other.

Unite Union spokesperson Pat Rafferty said the original pension plan is insignificant compared with company's profits.

"They're a company who can make earnings at this particular site of a million to three million pounds per day so the claw back in this pension scheme just pales into insignificance. There's no economic reason why they're doing this, it's just sheer madness."

However, Gordon Grant, general manager of the Grangemouth Refinery, said the company needed to cut expenses to make it more competitive.

"We need to modernise pensions as we need to modernise everything else to ensure that the site is competitive, competitive in every element of our business. That's the way that we'll be able to maintain a site here at Grangemouth and provide well paid jobs for people in the future."

Grangemouth is the major oil supplier to Scotland and parts of northern England, and those areas are expected to feel the greatest pain from the strike.