Derek. Absolutely, you did change "gallon" to "barrel". And, it's a "mea culpa" on my part that I failed to catch that and misquoted you as continuing to say $12 a gallon. So as not to make that mistake, I'm cutting and pasting, you said ($12 a gallon in 73, I believe it was), and later Might have been $12 a barrel, can't recall.
However Derek this makes no sense: "As to what I am claiming to recall, I never stated it was personal recollection" Whose recollection, pray tell, was it?
The rationing came because of so-called shortages. This was manipulation on the part of Oil companies to drive independents out of business, which they succeeded in doing.
The rest of the excerpt you post reads: The dual question posed by Mr. Simon is: How did we get into this mess, and how do we get out?
He's in a good position to answer the question. William Simon saw government at the highest policymaking level from the inside. He served as Secretary of the Treasury from 1974 to 1977. He also served as Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, 1973-74, and as chairman of the Economic Policy Board, the Federal Energy Office and the East-West Foreign Trade Board.
So, how does government act? Well, from this "Inside Washington" view of things, consider how government responded to the energy crisis, in particular to the Arab oil embargo in the wake of the Yom Kippur War in October of 1973. Suddenly America was cut off from Arabian oil. The crisis was real.
From the other article you cite: In 2000, when the price of oil rose sharply again, there were no price controls and the impact of another OPEC supply cut was steeply higher prices, but no lines. The year was NOT 2000. It was March 29, 1999, I had just driven from SF to Pleasanton where I stopped to get gas and in the time it took me to get out my credit card the gas price went up ten more cents. Prices in the Bay Area had gone to over $2.00, but the year was 1999. I remember that day because it was also the first time that the Dow closed over 10,000.
You need me to look something up for you, Here, from this source: abcnews.go.com
Crisis in the 1970s
Robert Ebel, an energy and national security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said even OPEC’s most militant factions today “understand they need us just as badly as we need them.”
“We give value to their oil,” said Ebel.
That’s what triggered the latest oil crisis: The price of oil in 1998 had plummeted dangerously low as producers, led by Saudi Arabia, boosted production in anticipation of growing demand from Asia just as the Asian economy took a dive. The resulting oil glut drove prices to less than $10 a barrel and prompted OPEC and other producers such as Mexico and Norway to cut production. Prices quickly tripled.
That contrasts sharply to the 1970s oil crisis, when the 1973 embargo was in Arab retaliation to U.S. support of Israel, and in 1979 when religious revolutionaries in Iran overthrew the shah, cut off its oil spigot and kept 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.
It was a time when many economists and environmentalists feared that oil prices of $80 a barrel or more would soon become a permanent part of the economic landscape. Some worried erroneously that the world was running out of oil. And the energy efficiency movement had yet to catch on.
More Information:
June 27, 2001, 5:06PM
Many fear recurrence of 1979 energy crisis
By ALLAN TURNER
Copyright 2001 Houston Chronicle
Gasoline was rationed, long-distance truckers struck, and there was violence on the highways. With almost 6 million unemployed and inflation soaring, there could be no doubt that the United States -- a nation on wheels -- was on its knees. President Carter soberly diagnosed a "crisis of confidence."
Cherie Reece probably is too young to fully appreciate the ordeal of the summer of 1979, when the nation was gripped by its second energy crisis in six years. But as she filled the tank of her minivan at a Houston service station last week, wincing as she watched the flashing numerals on the pump's display screen, she intuited the pain it had caused.
With regular gasoline prices here averaging $1.63 a gallon -- up 12 cents from last May and likely to rise as the vacation season approaches -- Reece already has rearranged her work schedule to reduce driving.
To Reece, gasoline's upward price march is a defining factor of the current energy crisis, said to be the worst since 1979.
While Californians, with their rolling blackouts and the possibility of gargantuan rate hikes, are hit hardest in the crisis, non-Californians like Reece may be the more typical victims. Experts differ sharply on the dimensions of the current crisis and effectiveness of President Bush's proposed national energy policy in addressing it. They differ, too, on whether the present situation even can be considered a "crisis" when compared to those bleak days of the 1970s.
"As the 21st century opens, the energy sector is in critical condition," scholars with Rice University's James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy and the Council on Foreign Relations warned recently in calling for a comprehensive national energy policy.
A host of factors -- an accident on the Alaskan pipeline or revolution in an oil-exporting country, for example -- could plunge the the nation into energy chaos, the report stated. It concluded, "There is no escaping the fact that we are reaching the beginning of an extensive period of sporadic supply shortages and periodic price hikes in the U.S. and in other parts of the world."
Former President Carter, though, is at the forefront of skeptics who suggest the seriousness of the today's situation has been exaggerated to "promote some long-frustrated ambitions of the oil industry at the expense of environmental quality."
"To me," said Michelle Michot Foss, director of the University of Houston's Energy Institute, "a `crisis' is a major war or other event that knocks out an important source of energy supplies for an extended period of time, with few or no alternatives available.
"I think what we mostly have right now are the consequences of a mismatch between supply and demand."
And Cutler Cleveland, director of Boston University's Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, dismissed the current crisis as "overblown."
"Fundamentally there's no comparison," he said. "The price shocks we lived through in 1973 and 1979 and '80 were real crises. There were large-scale economic impacts -- recession, unemployment, inflation, rationing. With the exception of California, which is quite severe, the current situation isn't anywhere as bad."
The American oil crisis of 1973 grew out of an early-October Arab attack on Israel, one that the Jewish state quickly and definitively repulsed. In late October, Saudi Arabia's King Faisal urged other Arab oil-producing states to stop crude-oil shipments to nations that had supported Israel, including the United States.
The embargo reduced the nation's oil supply by more than 10 percent, and the impact was immediate. Gasoline prices jumped from 25 cents a gallon to more than $1. Many service stations voluntarily closed on Sundays, limited sales to regular customers or dispensed no more than 10 gallons at a time. The embargo, which ended in spring 1974, led Congress to lower the national speed limit to 55 mph, and emphasized to Detroit automakers the need to build smaller, fuel-efficient cars.
A national plan for energy independence spurred the development of efficient new ways of extracting oil. The possibilities of alternative sources of energy were explored.
Americans were still cruising at 55 mph six years later when Middle East turmoil -- the Islamic revolution in Iran and then the Iran-Iraq war -- spawned an even more far-reaching crisis.
Martial law was imposed in much of Iran in late 1978 as Islamic militants stepped up their attack on remnants of the pro-Western government. Oil shipments to the West -- roughly 4 million barrels a day -- were stopped as oil fields were abandoned.
Other oil-producing nations in the Middle East cut production to reap windfall profits. Oil quickly rose to $20 a barrel, up from $13. Close to 70 percent of the nation's imported oil came from Arab countries. In February 1979, Carter called for voluntary conservation measures, but, observing that the Iranian oil cutback represented only 2.5 percent of national consumption, stopped short of calling the situation a "crisis."
Although Congress denied Carter the power to mandate gasoline rationing, a number of states authorized it on their own. In California, an even-odd day system was implemented. Sales were limited to 20 gallons, and no gas tank was filled unless it was more than half empty.
Texas Gov. Bill Clements ordered rationing in Houston, Dallas and Fort Worth on June 19, 1979.
Thermostats in public buildings were pegged at 65 degrees in winter and 80 degrees in summer.
"That was a real, true crisis," recalled Rozanne Weissman of the Washington, D.C.-based Alliance to Save Energy. "Gas lines. I remember awakening very early -- it was still dark -- to get into gas lines. I'd get there at 5:30. The station opened at 6, and there already would be a long line. Totally dark. Couldn't read. Couldn't put on makeup. Inching along, wasting gas in the process. I came up with 65 things you could do while waiting in line. One was getting a doctorate."
In May, the 30,000-member Independent Truckers Association called on members to curb their semis in protest of rising diesel costs. Forty percent of major carriers halted operations the first day.
Those who refused to join the protest faced violence. Shootings and stabbings were reported. National Guardsmen were called out in Illinois, where 66 incidents of truck-related violence occurred.
Highways in Alabama and North Carolina were peppered with nails.
By July, when Carter acknowledged a national "crisis of confidence," inflation had reached double digits. In a homey televised address, Carter said he was putting the nation on a "war footing" and vowed to change the nation's energy habits "even if it costs me another term."
Carter predicted the nation's economic slump would be mild and brief but glumly admitted that unemployment would rise by 1.3 million people to reach 7 million by Election Day in November 1980.
On that day, Carter was defeated by Republican Ronald Reagan.
Today's energy crunch, experts say, stems not from overseas turmoil nor efforts to sabotage America's energy system, but from underinvestment in infrastructure, overly stringent environmental standards, botched attempts at energy deregulation and the American penchant for self-indulgence.
chron.com
I expect you remember 9/11/01 quite vividly and will for many years into the future. I guarantee you will find it quite irritating and obnoxious for someone who wasn't there to tell you, "NO, that's not what happened". |
