The government is to suspend competition law to allow oil firms to target fuel deliveries at petrol stations following recent panic buying.
Officials said the move would make it easier for companies to share information and prioritise parts of the country most at need. It follows days of long queues at the pumps, after fears of disruption to the fuel supply sparked panic buying.
But a minister said there were no plans to bring in the Army to drive tankers. The government has been considering using the Army, but Environment Secretary George Eustice said the shortage of drivers was "not a huge problem".
"The only reason we don't have petrol on forecourts is people are buying petrol when they don't need it," he said, predicting that things would "calm down" once anxious people had filled their cars.
The Petrol Retailers Association has warned that as many as two-thirds of its membership of nearly 5,500 independent outlets are out of fuel, with the rest of them "partly dry and running out soon". The UK has a total of more than 8,000 filling stations.
Announcing the measure to exempt the oil industry from the Competition Act 1998, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said the government had "long-standing" contingency plans to maintain fuel supplies.
He said allowing the industry to share information would mean companies could work together more effectively to minimise disruption.
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