Posted on 12/28/2022 3:40:33 PM PST by DallasBiff
You should have seen our local gas stations immediately after 9-11! Prices shot sky high as everyone suddenly rushed to get a fill up! 1976 was mild compared to 9-11.
It’s a complete myth that the Embargo caused the ‘73 “Oil Crisis”. It worsened a preexisting, government-created crisis.
Gasoline and heating oil shortages had started a year before. The combination of federal quotas on imported oil (imposed following the ‘56 Suez Canal crisis), domestic production quotas, federal price controls and lack of refining capacity all combined to create severe heating oil shortages over the winter of ‘72 and of a gasoline into ‘73.
Several states started imposing lower speed limits in the May of ‘73 — five months before the Octopber embargo. That June (again, before the embargo), a quarter of gas stations across the nation had cut operating hours, and about 7% were rationing sales per customer.
When the embargo hit, unlike in ‘56/57, when the closure of the Suez Canal far more severely impacted international oil shipments, but, since the US oil market was far more efficient and competitive than in the ‘70s, did not create a domestic US “crisis” (Europe got burned; France intensified its nuclear power generation program as a result), the US was already into a supply spiral. The “Crisis” became the “Arab Oil Crisis” — convenient excuse and not the cause.
Thank you, Sir.
.. adding to my post above
I don’t have the source off-hand, but I also recall that the 1972/3 gasoline retail price controls led to an inversion of distributor-retail pricing, whereby at times or places distribution pricing was near to or higher than retail, which alone would produce a shortage with or without other supply pressures.
Actually it did make a huge change, which the article didn’t bother to notice. It was the crack in the armor for the Big 3. They didn’t bother to react to the changing situation, to a demand for better fuel economy in cars, a demand the Japanese companies were prepared to meet. That was the rock that became an avalanche and completely changed the car market in America, and the world.
I remember that in the early 1970s work on the Alaska Pipeline had been shut down by the enviros.
I said that if there is ever a gasoline shortage it would be completed. By 1980 it was completed.
During that time oil companies were not allowed to sell their oil at the higher rate after the embargo.
Only NEW WELLS drilled after the embargo could sell oil at the higher rate. So the oil companies shut down their old wells, drilled NEW WELLS right beside them and then were able to get the higher price for their oil.
I had oil field workers from SE New Mexico and Wyoming say the same thing.
True. With respect to the automobile industry. In 1975 buyers could choose a Toyota Corolla, a Honda Civic, or a Ford Pinto or, even worse a Chevy Vega.
Unfortunately too many Americans were still focused on buying America only and millions of Pinto’s and Vega’s were sold.
I had a job with a rental car company then. My job was to sit in gas lines all day. On odd/even days, we would swap license plates.
I heard stories at the time that they went around and filled all the tanks in shut down/abandoned service stations. It was a created crisis. I believe those stories.
According to my aunt, Maryland freeways had a speed limit of 75 mph prior to the double nickel.
There another factor that contributed to the ‘crisis’. US oil production peaked and then started its decline in 1971 upon the creation of the EPA. The decline appeared to confirm Hubert’s Peak Oil prediction but that was merely a coincidence.
The Nixon price controls were finally fully lifted by Ronald Reagan accompanied by the usual hysteria by the usual subjects that oil would go to $300 per barrel. The price subsequently collapsed.
I really despised the odd/even rationing. It came at a time that I was commuting a fair distance to work. Two jobs as well. PacBell by day, Southwestern College two nights a week. That meant regular fillups.
Michigan up north is 75 mph.
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