June 14 (Bloomberg) -- Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe's biggest oil company, said it stopped selling fuel at some U.K. filling stations as a strike by tanker drivers cut supplies.

Shell has received ``very few'' reports of service stations running out of fuel, Olga Gorodilina, a London-based spokeswoman, said today. ``Sales remain at high, but not extreme, levels.''

Gorodilina declined to comment on how much fuel stations stockpiled before the strike began yesterday.

The drivers, seeking a 13.2 percent pay increase, are picketing Shell depots around the country, choking off deliveries to almost 10 percent of the U.K.'s gas stations. The action comes as record oil prices provoke protests across Europe and amid calls for lower gas taxes in Britain.

``Our contingency plans, put in place last week, are working well,'' Gorodilina said. The Daily Mail newspaper said today that as many as 1,000 gas stations could be without fuel by next week.

Sheila Williams, a London-based spokeswoman for BP Plc, denied reports in the Mail and the Daily Telegraph that 15 drivers who deliver fuel for Europe's second-largest oil company had refused to start work.

``Absolutely not,'' she said. ``No BP driver has joined any strike action. They would be in breach of their contract if they did so.''

No independent retailers have sold out of fuel, Alex Wells, a spokesman for the Petrol Retailers Association, said today from Brighton on the U.K.'s south coast. The organization mainly represents independent gasoline and diesel sellers.

Fuel demand was 25 percent higher than normal on Thursday and 10 percent higher on Friday, he said.

Separately, there was little evidence that motorway protests over rising fuel prices had caused ``major'' traffic disruptions, said Kelly Logan, a spokeswoman for the Highways Agency.

About 70 trucks formed a convoy through Lancashire, Cheshire and Manchester in the northwest of England, a police spokeswoman for the Lancashire Constabulary said.

To contact the reporters on this story: Alaric Nightingale in London at Anightingal1@bloomberg.net Caroline Byrne in London at cbyrne12@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 14, 2008 09:41 EDT