elmatador Re: "1973 oil shock" This was a big shock for several reasons. You had American industry that had become accustomed to sub $2 oil all of a sudden having to deal with $12-$15 oil and shortages of oil AND natural gas to boot.
The natural gas shortage was a real problem. In 1973 interstate interruptible NG (gas that is used by industry on a "when available" basis, but back then this was nearly all the time except during the very coldest winter and in most any amount, at least before the crisis) was regulated in price, in fact to a price that had not been allowed to rise since 1954. You had the 1970 EPA act which had forced utilities to switch to residual oil from coal because of the emissions requirements of the new law. Then in 1973 oil became unavailable so they switched to natural gas, especially in the southeast where there were NG pipelines. And this was not for fuel for turbines but for steam boilers, and in moost cases boilers that were really not designed for NG in the first place, but were built for pulverized coal or residual oil which have more "red heat" than NG and hence needed less convection surface. So this was a double whammy on NG. At the 1954 regulated price NG was even cheaper than $2 oil.
I remember hearing that NG was many times the regulated price inside of the producing states like Texas, because only "interstate" NG was regulated in price, not "intrastate" gas used in the state where it was produced. THese regulations were unwound over time but really contributed to the decade long crisis.
Back then the federal government was alarmed over the oil crisis, seriously alarmed. Engineers and managers in gas consuming industrys were urged to attend federal "workshops"and "seminars" (I still have a bunch of federal energy conservation "workbooks" and other literature dated to 1973) and were were lectured on the urgent need to reduce energy consumption. I attended several of these under the Ford administration and maybe while Nixon was still in office, long before Carter.
I don't ever remember the concept of "peak oil" ever being discussed at any of these workshops, other than in the sense that we were "running out of oil and NG". The idea that the USA had "peaked" in 1970 I really don't think was recognized at the time, though I may be wrong.
Now we know that during the mid-1970's the Saudi's had cut back on production for various internal reasons (according to the Simmonds book Twilight in the Desert). This was a big factor. And I really don't think the Cold War, Vietanm or any problems with the US leadership had much to do with it, certainly not in 1973 but some of that may have played a part later. In 1973 the country felt pretty good about Vietnam; it was apparently ending and Nixon was firmly in charge.
Slagle |
