Esso yesterday expressed dismay over the Body Shop's decision to back a UK boycott of Esso garages in protest at its parent company's stance on global warming and its past record on renewable energy spending. "From our point of view we are disappointed that is what the Body Shop has chosen to do," said a spokesman for Esso, the European brand of ExxonMobil . Reiterating previous statements he said the company denied allegations that it was not concerned by climate change. "Calls for a boycott are of concern to the company. Particularly from our point of view if the position on climate change is different to what might have been represented."

The Body Shop yesterday became the first business to publicly back the boycott pledging to distribute leaflets in its UK stores and banning its fleet of trucks from filling up at Esso service stations. It has also urged its 2,500-strong staff to do the same.

The boycott, part of the Stop Esso Campaign launched by an alliance of green groups back in May, has gradually been gaining momentum. High profile celebrities including former model Bianca Jagger and popstar Annie Lennox have backed the cause while European Members of Parliament have urged consumers to boycott Exxon Mobil Corp's Esso brand products. Green groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth maintain that Exxon Mobil has been instrumental in helping to derail the Kyoto Protocol by funding orgaisations like the Global Climate Coalition. The powerful lobby group counters the view that fossil fuels cause global warming. Environmental groups also berate the company for failing to spend a cent on renewable energy initiatives in recent years. Exxon Mobil counters that it supports the study of climate change and has invested over $500 million in renewable energy. But on closer inspection it emerges that the super major pledged this sum in the late 1980s.

It is not known if the boycott is biting into Esso's bottom line - the company declined to comment on the impact on sales - but analysts said that the campaign would be damaging to any oil company operating in the notoriously competitive UK fuel retail environment. Retail margins on fuels have been wafer thin for sometime and oil companies are only just beginning to benefit from an upturn in profits after the fuel protests of last year which forced retailers to hold prices down. "We are in a period at the moment where the fuels retail environment in the UK has switched to being reasonably favourable, where oil product prices are coming down, and margins are coming down," said Stephen Brooks an oil analyst with Wood Mackenzie. "Esso would want to take advantage of that and maximise their volume throughput at their filling stations...The boycott might have the effect of dampening demand."

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Justin Penrose, PA News

The south of England could be set for floods every winter and water shortages each summer as a result of climate change, the Environment Agency announced today. Rivers in the south of England which burst their banks causing horrendous floods just a few months ago are now running low, threatening water supplies this summer because of the recent hot weather.

Officials at the agency are concerned that the extreme weather hitting the area could become a regular feature of the south's meteorological patterns. Thousands of homes were affected by some of the worst floods on record in Kent and Sussex last winter, causing millions of pounds worth of damage. But now the River Ouse in Sussex, which flooded Lewes - the worst flood hit town in the country - is having to be topped up to keep it flowing and prevent environmental damage.

A total of 800 homes and businesses were affected by the floods in the town with 700 cars written off. In Kent water companies are no longer able to abstract drinking water from the River Medway which flooded the village of Yalding seven times in less than six months. In West Sussex levels of the River Lavant, at Chichester, are so low that it will cease flowing within the week if there is no rain. Yet the town was threatened by the dangerously high level of the river just before Christmas resulting in the need to build an emergency flood relief channel. Ironically some homes in Hampshire are still being affected by flooding through groundwater stored in chalk.

Jo Hunt, spokesperson for the Environment Agency, said there was real concern that floods could haunt the south of England every year. ``Climate change is believed to be the cause of these seemingly contradictory circumstances and the agency is gravely concerned that flooding will once again cause devastation this winter,'' she said. ``It's a case of extremes as we have this problem now yet a few months ago we had the terrible conditions with the floods and the misery they were bringing. ``We have this very strange set of circumstances where people are still cleaning up after the floods but we are having to top up rivers. ``We are looking at a situation where this pattern of events will not be unusual.'' She added that recurrence of these weather patterns was likely. ``We should look like this more and more in the future and it is a serious concern that we could have floods each winter and water shortages in the summer,'' she said. ``People joked during the floods that at least we would not have any hose pipe bans this summer but it is very dry and if we are having to top up rivers there is a very extreme weather situation.''

On the Isle of Wight the water levels of the River Eastern Yar have halved in the past four weeks owing to the pressure to supply water to the public and food growers coupled with the hot weather.

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