Anyone old enough to remember the Iran Oil Crisis of the ‘70s?

Yeah I remember it quite well. The highways were deserted. This time around we’ll have the Strategic Reserve, but of concern is the number of days of supply we have for gasoline. If our main pipeline goes down to the Northeast and the situation escalates, it’ll look pretty bad around here.


Unsupervised!

 

the other thread, someone mentioned only 5% of our crude coming from there?

 

I remember those very long gas station lines, then they would run out of gas....

Personally I'm not worried....because I own a Prius Prime !



Rob43

 

I CAN'T DRIVE 55 !!!
Remember it well.
Alas, almost nobody else does it seems, and we are right back to our glutenous ways again.

Human beings are just STUPID.
They have ruined every advanced society they ever created on the face of the earth one way or another.
And now it is just a "horse race" to see what critical factor does us in this time.

 

We’re all old geezers here!

(Well, speak for yourself!)

 

Yes and no. I was a kid then, old enough to have seen the footage on the evening news. However, I grew up in Alaska. We had our own mini-refinery tapped off the pipeline. Not much impact to us.

Honestly I’m expecting this to be a bigger impact on all the plastic we buy from China. I understand Saudi crude is particularly good for making plastic, and nobody processes more plastic than China.

 

I was hitchin mostly than, so I saw lines but hardly ever got stuck in them. I do remember what happened after the crisis was over. Last price I remember before the crisis was .55 and still had to ask friends to pitch in for a few bucks worth to get my baha bug to the dunes or whereever else we were headed to...

 

I gather the attack took somewhere around 10% of the world oil supply off line: substantial, but not huge.

 

Hmmm... “Iran oil crisis”? FWIW, the buzzword phrase I remember from that era/event was “Arab oil embargo.” There was the “Iran hostage crisis” in ... very roughly ... that time frame.

 

Somebody check me on the history, but I thought the embargo was the 1973-4 event, while the 1979 event was tied to the Iranian revolution.

 

I remember it. But I remember it as a kid.
I remember some area's going to an even/odd license plate number day, for purchasing. I remember the adults complaining about it.

Amazing we survived, especially because back then....the majority of vehicles had horrible gas mileage.

My Aunt had a VW bug...and people thought of it almost like people think of a Hybrid today. That is, people thought she was lucky to have such an economical vehicle during that crisis.

 

Right off the top of my head, that sounds about right.

 

I remember the odd-even plate abomination here in NJ. If your plate ended in an odd number, you could get gas 1 day and the next day was for even plated cars. I had and odd plate # and my brother only had his permit with an even plate, so I had to sit in those lines twice.

 

@Prius from Dad

Is that the bowling alley on RT 37 in your avatar background?

 

The U.S. imports about 380,000 barrels (42 gallons/bbl) weekly from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. That's not a lot. The U.S. exports 3,045,000 bbls of crude oil weekly. We can cover any Saudi shortfall by reducing exports. There might be some dislocation due to refineries able to process only certain grades of crude oil, but it can be handled. The UAE has stated that it and other OPEC producers can make up the KSA shortfall to the rest of the world.

U.S. Imports & Exports
Weekly Preliminary Crude Imports by Top 10 Countries of Origin (ranking based on 2017 Petroleum Supply Monthly data)

 

I recall that is was a big deal when the price hit $1.00/gal, since most of the pumps had mechanical meters that had only three digits, and thus were limited to 99.9 cents/gal. In these parts, gas stations got permission to set the pumps to one dollar less than the actual price, so a dollar per gallon was added by the clerk to the total displayed on the pump. It took a while for the meters in all the pumps to be replaced by units that could be set to more than 99.9. This was before electronic displays on pumps.

 

I had forgotten about that. I remembered as soon as I saw your comment. We start to feel like the world is crazy now, but it was at least as crazy then.

 

Middle East may not have much effect on US gas price, but fracking ban... that would be a different story.