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ENERGY CRISES
Human society
depends on energy. We use it to warm our homes in winter and cool them
in summer; to grow and cook our food; to extract and process natural
resources, and to manufacture items we use daily; and to power various
forms of transportation. Many of the conveniences of modem living
depend on a ready supply of energy.
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The
United States' dependence on energy resources from other countries
has been dramatically demonstrated several times in recent years. In
1973, for example, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
(OPEC) restricted oil shipments to the United States, creating an
energy crisis. Although total oil consumption was cut by only about
5 percent in response to the restrictions, the United States was
thrown into a panic. Because Americans own a lot of automobiles and
because automobiles require petroleum fuels, any factor that
influences oil availability or cost has tremendous repercussions in
our society. The 1973 OPEC oil embargo resulted in escalating prices
for gasoline and home heating oil. Long lines at filling stations
were commonplace, and in some states motorists were restricted to
buying gasoline every other day (based on the last digits of their
license plate numbers). Car sales dropped and people who did buy
cars generally purchased the more fuel-efficient foreign makes.
Because cars get better mileage at moderate speeds, the freeway
speed limit was reduced by federal law to 55 miles per hour as an
energy conservation measure. |
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One positive
effect of the 1973 oil embargo was the development of automobiles, both
foreign and domestic, with greater fuel economy. In 1975 the United
States government imposed fuel efficiency standards on the automobile
industry; they began to go into effect in 1978 with a corporate average
fuel economy of 18 miles per gallon. (The 1992 standard was 27.5 miles
per gallon.)
The OPEC oil
embargo of 1973 was not the only oil crisis Americans have faced in
recent years. In 1979 oil prices skyrocketed from $13 to $34 a barrel
due to an oil shortage touched off by the Iranian revolution, although
the effects of this oil crisis were not as crippling as those of 1973.
By the 1980s, the oil scares of the seventies were largely forgotten as
oil prices declined. Americans purchased more cars, both domestic and
foreign, than ever before. Gasoline was so cheap and abundant that
consumption of gasoline increased during the 1980s. Between 1985 and
1989, oil imports increased from 4.9 million barrels a day to 8 million
barrels. At the same time, domestic oil production in the United States
declined.
In the
1990s, a greater proportion of our total oil supply is being used to
provide gasoline for automobiles than was used in 1973. In 1989 (the
most recent data available at this writing), 46 percent of ail refined
crude oil in the United States was converted to gasoline. After Iraq
invaded Kuwait in the summer of 1990, fears of a war in the Persian Gulf
caused jitters among oil companies in the United States. The prices of
heating oil and gasoline rose dramatically, but they stabilized once it
was clear that a war in the Persian Gulf initially
would not restrict our
domestic oil supply. Nevertheless, the war with Iraq demonstrated that
the United States is still vulnerable when it comes to energy supplies,
and energy conservation is not an issue of the past.
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