{"id":376769,"date":"2026-03-10T00:55:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T00:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/376769\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T00:55:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T00:55:10","slug":"is-the-u-s-headed-for-a-repeat-of-the-1973-oil-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/376769\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the U.S. headed for a repeat of the 1973 oil crisis?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The current situation in the Middle East \u2014 a major war involving the U.S., Israel, and Israel\u2019s enemies, spiking global oil prices<\/a>, spiking domestic gasoline prices \u2014 may feel a bit like d\u00e9j\u00e0-vu.<\/p>\n

All this happened back in 1973, during the Yom Kippur War.\u00a0And again in 1979, after the Iranian Revolution.<\/p>\n

More than 50 years later, is the situation really analogous? Can lessons be learned?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s roll the clock back to 1973.\u00a0Richard Nixon is president. The U.S. is far-and-away the biggest economy in the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And, said Princeton University historian Julian Zelizer, \u201cThis is a culture after World War II built around automobiles, around highways, around driving, new suburban homes which required a lot of heating.\u201d<\/p>\n

The heating takes a lot of oil, most of it pumped and shipped from the Middle East.\u00a0Which suddenly becomes a very big problem when OPEC declares an oil embargo<\/a> on the U.S. and other allies of Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis triggers the first round of an oil crisis where Americans face long gas lines and high prices,\u201d Zelizer said.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a second crisis in 1979 when Iranian oil exports crater<\/a> after the nation\u2019s Islamic Revolution.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can only buy gas certain days, people are siphoning off gas from people\u2019s cars. There\u2019s just this air of desperation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also resolve to make the U.S. economy less vulnerable, by reducing our dependence on foreign oil. The government encourages more fuel efficiency and more oil exploration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fast forward to now.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe world moved from the U.S. being the biggest oil importer, to the U.S. being the biggest oil exporter,\u201d said climate economist Gernot Wagner at Columbia Business School.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a catch.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even with massive new U.S. oil fields, American businesses and consumers still pay the\u00a0global market price.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd yeah, those prices just shot up,\u201d Wagner said.<\/p>\n

Which means a prolonged war that keeps oil prices high could still create conditions similar to the oil crises of the 1970s: driving higher inflation, and stifling growth.<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The current situation in the Middle East \u2014 a major war involving the U.S., Israel, and Israel\u2019s enemies,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[174],"tags":[71796,79,179,18,19,17,71,8820,13149,20658,1545],"class_list":["post-376769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-1970s","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-eire","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-israel","tag-middle-east","tag-opec","tag-richard-nixon","tag-war"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116202158680545946","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}