Gas_Shortage

Gas Shortage The gas shortage or oil crisis in the United States was something that most middle aged Americans today remember. It was a time of uncertainty for Americans when it came time to fill up the gas tanks on their cars. Was there going to be gas at the local station or would they be out' It was a question that ran through the heads of most Americans at that time. The shortage of gas at the time was something that will probably never happen again in this country and something that would be devastating if it did. First let’s see how all of this happened. The gas shortage or oil crisis was mainly caused by the Iranian Revolution. This was caused because the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi decided to flee the country after protests by the Iranian citizens. This caused drilling of oil to slow down and even stop in most places. Therefore, exports to the United States to dramatically decline and eventually stop. Because of this stop in oil exports, once exports started to resume they were sent out in lower volumes then before the stoppage. This caused the supply and demand aspect of oil to get out of whack. The prices of a gallon of oil went up dramatically. This wouldn’t have been so bad had the Carter administration not stopped all oil imports from Iran. That was one of the dumbest things I believe he could have done, all it did was cause widespread panic in this country, but we’ll get back to that. The Carter administration in response began deregulation of oil prices. This allowed the United States to start outputting oil at a much faster rate then before but we started importing oil slower than before as well. If someone can explain to me how this makes any sense at all, I would love to hear. Anyways, because of the increased exports of oil and decreased imports of oil it created a shortage here in the country. This caused great fear in the country. The country had already gone through one of these gas shortages in 1973 and now another one was happening. How could this happen again' With people fearing that there would be no gas everyone started heading to the nearest pump to fill up their tanks. The problem with everyone going to the pumps at the same time is that eventually that gas station will run out and people will be left with no gas. Guess what' That’s exactly what happened. There were lines miles and miles long with people waiting just to be able to use the next available pump. It eventually got to the point that the gas stations and even government had to start telling people when they were allowed to go get gas. The proposal of odd-even rationing was used. So that meant that people who had odd-numbered license plates could only get gas on odd-numbered days and people with even-numbered license plates could only get gas on even-numbered days. So people really had to conserve. Eventually the Carter administration was able to get everything worked out and the gas shortage ended. The administration proposed new regulations be removed on prices of gas. They also proposed drilling for oil themselves and getting oil from multiple locations to avoid another shortage or crisis. I personally believe that if we had been getting oil from multiple places right off the bat then we would probably have never gotten in that situation a second time, only five or six years after we had just had another shortage. Also if Jimmy Carter and his administration had not tried to “fix” things, by thinking that increasing our exports of oil and lowering our imports of oil, was a good idea then maybe the crisis could have also been avoided. I guess that’s what you get when you have a liberal in office. If Gerald Ford had won the election against Carter and been in office, I think 100% that this could have all for the most part been avoided.