Oil workers go on strike at large refinery in UK

Edinburgh: Hundreds of workers at Scotland's only oil refinery on Sunday began a 48-hour strike that has forced BP PLC to shut a pipeline system that delivers almost a third of Britain's North Sea oil.

BP said it had completed the closure of the Forties Pipeline System by early morning, when 1,200 workers at the Grangemouth refinery in central Scotland walked off the job. The pipeline brings in 700,000 barrels of oil a day from the North Sea to BP's Kinneil plant, which is powered from the Grangemouth site.

Energy industry group Oil & Gas UK said the strike, over pension issues, could cost 50 million pounds a day in lost production.

The government urged motorists not to hoard fuel, saying there would be enough to go around. It wants to avoid a repeat of scenes in 2000 when motorists were forced to line up at gas stations as truckers angry at heavily taxed fuel brought Britain to a standstill by blockading refineries.