How interesting the County Press (31-07-20) should choose to lead with the front page story on an event (the Diamond Races) which is not due to take place until October 2021 and interests very few people, yet chose to hide the most important issue, which will ultimately affect the lives of everyone on the Island, in a few lines on page 8 — the closure of the fuel distribution terminal at East Cowes.

I am hoping that there may be a last-minute forced delay to allow other interested parties to put systems in place to fill the void that will be left.

I thought it was an extremely irresponsible piece of reporting with some of the ‘facts’ incorrect.

The newspaper basically pointed people to the supermarkets for their fuel and chose to ignore the fact that another company is supplying independent sites with fuel, sourcing its products from the mainland to ensure these sites can continue to operate as normal and provide a full service to the public as an alternative to the supermarkets.

It is clear the information supplied in the article was sourced from inside the terminal and no attempt was made to get a statement from any other interested party.

The real issue is all the products that cannot be supplied by supermarkets.

Due to the harvest, there is about to be a massive increase in demand for tractor diesel. With lockdown measures eased, as can be seen from the number of boats that have appeared in marinas and harbours, there will be a huge demand for marine fuels, both petrol and diesel.

With many parts of the Island not on mains gas, rural areas are reliant on oil fired heating and up to 90 per cent of the Island’s requirements have come from the one terminal.

All these products and many more, such as lubricating oils, barrels of specialists oils, which were held in the terminal will have to be ordered from the mainland.

The speed of events has been so swift that it has been impossible to put together a blanket cover plan, but many people are working hard to make the transitional period as painless as possible.

Editor’s footnote: The CP made strenuous efforts to find people affected by the closure. It would be interesting to know who the alternative firm is.

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