Oil Shortages Force Hundreds Of Schools To Close

Hundreds of schools have been forced to remain closed after the Christmas holidays as the cold winter weather continues to sweep across many parts of Britain. Many of these schools have cited a severe shortage of gas or heating oil as the reason why they cannot reopen to students. Shockingly one school had to close when they realised that their heating oil supply had actually been stolen by thieves.

A lot of schools had to continue to use their heating oil over the Christmas holidays to keep their systems going. Because this meant the oil supplies were eaten into over the holidays, a lot of schools did not have enough oil to come back to and are now awaiting emergeny deliveries of heating oil to get them back in business. Frozen oil pipes were another reason for some schools being unable to reopen. It has been many years since the country has faced such prolonged and heavy snowfalls. There are no signs of improvement for the immediate future and snow has been lying in many areas across the country for nearly three weeks now.

The closure of schools during this period of heavy snow and freezing temperatures, left them prime targets for the new trend of stealing heating oil. Thieves took 1000 litres of heating oil from the school in question, stated police sources. But other schools that have heating systems that kick in when the temperature drops to a certain level were left with dwindling supplies of heating oil. Oil supplies in these schools were ever decreasing over the holidays as the temperatures remained below freezing for much of the time.

The cold weather is crippling some parts of the country with many people unable to get to work. The fact that there are hundreds of schools now closed means that there will be more people who simply cannot make it to work as they will have no one to look after their children.

Getting the home heated up during winter can be very expensive. Electricity and gas prices are very high and show no signs of coming down any time soon. Savvy people are changing over to oil as a home fuel though. After the changeover they have to make sure that the storage tanks are always full of cheap heating oil to ensure they never run out.