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

Oh yeah, was driving my 63 Impala, about 11 MPG!

I thought those days were gone until I moved to the Southeast, from Cali. First couple of years here there were those nasty Hurricanes in the GOM which closed the refineries and shutdown pipelines, make gas hard to get and expensive, but only regionally. That was one of the motivators to get a PiP and now the Prime.

I can go months between fill ups unless I have a road trip so unless the grid goes down, I am in good shape.

 

I had to make a jump and get my tickets to Hawaii earlier than planned. I would not put it past the airlines to use any excuse to bump up ticket prices. Probably paying $200 more than I wanted for 2 tickets .

 

I remember one "fine" day in 1979 when I went with my mom to wait in a gas line for nearly three hours (she had a '68 Impala named "Betsy" -- all of her cars were named Betsy). I was 14. I should have brought a book. It's not like we had a smartphone or an iPad in 1979.

But I can also remember the earlier oil shock, the 1973-74 embargo, when I was about 8. I vividly recall the gas stations having red, yellow and green flags. Red meant they had no gas. Green meant they had gas and anyone could buy. Yellow meant supply was limited and you had to have no more than (I think) 1/4 tank to purchase. The '79 shock didn't have that. You knew who had gas by where the lines were.

 

5% may not sound like a whole lot, but if there's one thing that you learn during the aftermath of a Hurricane or an oil embargo it's the fact that price doesn't matter NEARLY as much as availability.
The global oil market just constricted by 5%, but MORE IMPORTANTLY, nobody knows how much more constricted the global supply WILL BE in 3 months.
Or?
Whether people will be shooting at each other (more!) in the straits in 3 weeks.

...or 3 Hours.

Besides.
This isn't an OIL thing, it's an ENERGY thing, and unless your car is coal or nuclear powered, turning off the spigot in sandland WILL have downstream effects in the USofA.

Notice anything about the objects bordered in red?
(Hint: They're not all OIL tanks, from what I've been told, especially the ones in the lower right which look more gassey than oily to me......but that's JUST a guess.)

Yeah.
We have loads of energy here at home, but Amazon doesn't buy oil at today's price, because the Jet-A that they're burning in those fancy new jets was probably bought 3 months ago. The stuff that they (and Delta, and PG&E and the US Navy) is bidding on NOW is for probably 90 days out.

If you were selling a mega-gallon of diesel for a December delivery date to a large commercial operator or distributor how would the price look NOW as opposed to last Friday?

In the words of a certain ex V-POTUS:
It's a big fracking deal......
(fracking or no fracking)

Key takeaways for me:

1. A 3-mile commute to work means no worries about how to get to work. I can walk or bicycle.

2. If this were 1973 then there would already be blocks long lines and odd-even day gas availability. So....5% is a big deal....but not THAT big. (yet)

3. Whoever came up with hydraulic fracking deserves a place on Mt. Rushmore.
Perhaps a small place between Ted and Abe. If this were 1973 we would already be planning Alpha strikes and warming up T-LAMs.

YMMV

 

Another automotive-adjacent effect of the attack studied in this "The Street” article.

 

55 mph national speed limit.
Many (most) gas stations closed nights and weekends.
A few gas stations switched to listing the price in liters to make the price sound better.

 

While true, the numbers do provide a bit of a false sense of security. Unless we also implement oil export restrictions, U.S. refineries will happily sell their oil and gas products to overseas customers facing shortages at higher prices for both them and us.

A better measure of how disruptions would affect gas prices is spare production capacity. If it drops too low or there occurs a supply disruption greater than the spare capacity, gas prices will basically spike everywhere.

 

now if you go 55 in the right lane, you get rear ended

 

Prediction:

We attack them with a "measured" response.

Gas prices then go up about .75 cents compared to right now, then very slowly after months and months gas prices fall back down.



Rob43

 

The pumps around Houston, where I grew up, dispensed in liters for that all-too-short time.

 

I saw gas stations advertise half-gallon pricing to escape pump calculation limits- though that wasn’t during the 1979 crisis, it was just ordinary increases earlier in the forever-war.

 

Nope. It's Ocean Lanes in Lakewood on RT 88. That is an old pic. I lived in Brick at the time, around 2004.

 

Great perspective especially the reference to JET-A which only ever makes it to my back burner

I'll add a bit timidly that Yes, and we never really know what we are going to do next either. Or what and how much we are going to be told about what we are actually doing.

@Prius from Dad The wife the pets and I stayed at the Red Roof in Tinton Falls a few times and drove up through Toms R back roads on our way backup north. That was before in car nav and I was driving by the seat of my pants with the wife continually asking if I knew where I was going.

 

I remember the oil embargo, but only in the news.

I was in college... ...riding a bicycle.

 

In that general time frame, we had a VW “Squareback” and then a Volvo 145. I can’t recall whether we had bought the Volvo yet when that hit; I think so, but I can’t recall for sure...

Ironically, my own first car was a monster Chevy Chevelle Malibu monster — 12MPG and all. Heck, I was a college student and it was cheap; what can I say?! Then a Diesel Rabbit, then Diesel Jetta.

 

TR North-Class of '85

 

Manasquan Class of (ahem) '72

 

Overseas customer probably have already secured supplies from us at higher rates. They move faster than the US Gov’t (actually everybody does) and are more susceptible to tightening supplies. So you’re right, no way will our refineries sell product to us before they fulfill contracts at much higher prices. So the Prez can release all the oil he wants, it’ll end up overseas before it helps us.


iPad ? Pro

 

Did you like the Squareback?
My other Uncle and Aunt had a Squareback at that time.
I guess I was already becoming kind of a weird car nerd, because I thought the Squareback was such a cool car. In the age of the Muscle Car, I was impressed by the design of the Squareback.

If I remember right, VW had the engine placed mid-vehicle, which allowed a flat load floor to be created in the back. Plus, you then had all the space in the front, where on a typical vehicle the engine would be.

Even though by today's standards, and even by standards back then, they were arguably all "unsafe and any speed". I have a soft spot for all those classic VW products.
When I was a young teenager, I almost bought a VW thing. I kind of wished I had. At that window of time, you could still find them, beat up but functional, for relatively cheap. They hadn't yet reached "collectible" status.
For a short period of time, I did own a mid-60's VW bug. I thought it was great.

 

Oh yeah, I loved our VW Squareback! I was pretty young at the time; I think we bought it in 1969ish (and the Volvo 145 in 1972).

It did indeed have a flat load floor with a station wagon back, and yes, it also had a fair-sized “frunk,” to use the Tesla terminology. So, yes, we could carry a lot in it, and we did, including Texas-to-Montana trips to see my father’s sister there.

However, it was not mid-engine; the engine was decidedly behind the rear (drive) wheels. The Porsche 914, however, had its slightly-larger engine mounted in front of the rear wheels.

VW later released the 411 and then 412 (very similar), which was a somewhat larger version of the Squareback/Fastback/Notchback that used the 914 engine, but behind the drive wheels, IIRC.