British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling met oil industry leaders in Scotland on Wednesday amid a controversy over soaring fuel prices, according to a BBC report.
The government is under mounting pressure to scrap controversial plans to increase road tax on gas guzzling cars.
The meeting comes after truck drivers in their hundreds staged protests in London on Tuesday against rising fuel costs, and Labour members of Parliament (MPs) urged ministers to rethink increases in both petrol and road tax.
Brown and Darling met representatives of oil companies in north-east Scotland, where they were expected to ask industry leaders what help they would need from the government in order to increase production -- such as investment in new infrastructure or oil exploration.
Liberal Democratic Treasury spokesman Vince Cable has called on Brown to wait before making a decision over plans to raise fuel duty by two pence in autumn.
Business Secretary John Hutton and Justice Secretary Jack Straw insisted the prime minister was "listening" to concerns over the planned increase in vehicle excise duty -- giving rise to speculation that the government could stage a U-turn. Writing in The Guardian on Wednesday, Brown said an increase in the supply of oil would lower the price of fuel and ease pressure on the government over the planned tax increases.
He also called on nations to unite to stabilize the price of oil, which has increased from 10 U.S. dollars a barrel a decade ago to 135 U.S. dollars a barrel today.
He said Britain would propose that a global strategy to tackle the impact of higher oil prices be put at the top of the agenda of the next meeting of the G8 group of industrialized countries.
"The cause of rising prices is clear: growing demand and too little supply to meet it both now and in the future. Our goal that Britain becomes a low-carbon economy is now an economic priority as well as an environmental imperative,"
he said in the article.
On Tuesday, the Treasury defended its plans to increase duty on more polluting cars registered since 2001 by as much as 200 pounds (about 390 U.S. dollars), saying this would increase the incentive to develop and purchase fuel-efficient cars.
So far, 42 MPs have signed a House of Commons motion asking the chancellor to reconsider the policy on the grounds that it is retrospective and "unfair" to people who have already bought their cars.