Police halt free petrol stunt amid traffic chaos

LONDON (Reuters) - Drivers were treated to free fuel on Friday at a London petrol station decorated as a military bunker until police stopped the promotional stunt because of traffic chaos.

Video games company Electronic Arts (EA) tried to give away 20,000 pounds worth of free petrol to drivers at the Last Stop garage in north London, which they had dressed up with jeeps, oil barrels and sandbags.

"EA approached me to promote their video game and paid 50 percent in advance. It was a very busy day and police had to stop it," manager Harjit Patel said.

Patel, who stuck hand written notices for customers saying "sorry, no more free petrol" on pumps, said he gave away more than 12,000 pounds of petrol before police intervened around noon.

Although crude and fuel prices have eased since June, when they helped push inflation up to almost double the Bank of England's 2 percent target, customers at the filling station were still feeling the pinch.

"Flippin hell yeah it's too expensive, I'm going mad about it. The price of crude is going down but the fuel price hasn't gone down," said a 35-year-old car salesman, who gave his name as Singh.

Some residents were unhappy about the noise and the pile-up of cars in what is normally a quiet residential street.

"I got 40 quid of petrol out of it in the end but I was quite annoyed because I work from home, I could just hear a lot of shouting and screaming going on," said Karen Whiteread, a photographer who lives next to the garage.

(Reporting by Golnar Motevalli; Editing by Angus MacSwan)