A brief energy history lesson
It's often been said that those who don't learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them--something that seems completely true.
Once upon a time, public schools taught at least a rough outline of history. But teaching real history essentially stopped around 1970, arguably because thecommunists Democrats progressives enlightened liberals running America's public schools preferred to indoctrinate students with socialist, politically-correct hogwash instead. And we've yet to recover.
So herewith, an effort to educate young Americans.
If you're under 30, for your entire life the U.S. has had plenty of energy. And as far as you know, that's always been true. But what you may not know is that back in 1973--i.e. within the lifetimes of living people--the oil-exporting countries of the middle east decided to try to bring the U.S. to its knees, by stopping the sale of oil to us. This was called an "oil embargo."
The stage for this was set because U.S. oil production started dropping significantly around 1970. Oil companies adjusted by increasing the amount of oil they imported. People who knew the significance of those numbers feared a stock market crash, and began pulling out--triggering a crash that began early in 1973--well before the embargo.
The trigger for the embargo came in October of 1973, when Egypt and Syria, without warning or provocation, launched a surprise attack on Israel. After fighting off the initial wave of attacks, Israel asked the Nixon administration to replenish its military supplies. Nixon responded by using our Air Force to deliver arms to Israel, at the same time as the Soviet Union was re-supplying Egypt and Syrian forces.
In response, four days after the U..S. airlift began, the OPEC nations raised the selling price of their oil by 70 percent, by decree, instantly.
Later we learned that on August 23, 1973, in preparation for the surprise attack that would take place on October 6th, Egypt's president Anwar Sadat asked Saudi Arabia's king Faisal to persuade the members of OPEC to use the "oil weapon" if the U.S. (as expected) helped Israel.
Four months later, 20% of American gasoline stations had no gas.[36] To stretch supplies, stations limited buyers to some arbitrary number of gallons, and people lined up for hours to get any amount. Eight months later the retail price of gasoline in the U.S. was up by about 40 percent. State governments requested citizens not to put up Christmas lights. Oregon banned Christmas and commercial lighting altogether.[18] Politicians called for national rationing.
By mid-1974 the price of oil had quadrupled.
The embargo delayed recovery from the stock market crash that had started early in 1973, and made the crash both longer and deeper than it would otherwise have been.
In response to all this, pro-American people and advocates of the free market suggested it would be a great idea to increase our domestic oil and gas production. They asked the government to open areas off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts for exploration. But Democrat politicians, writers for Time magazine and every "elite" talking-head on the networks dismissed this as stupid. They somberly told us "America will never be energy-independent."
So, brutally slapped down, free-marketers crawled back to mom's basement and started serious drug addictions. U.S. oil and gas production continued to slowly drop, until Barak Obama arrived. And with a wave of his hand, he solved the problem by saying "Let there be lots of oil for my people!" And Lo!, fountains of oil appeared!
Just kidding. What really happened was, a bunch of inventive, hard-working Americans--mostly independent producers risking their own fortunes--found a way to extract large amounts of oil from so-called "tight formations." As a result, U.S. oil production--which had fallen to half its 1970 peak--is back to that peak again.
Upon seeing this astonishing recovery,
Once upon a time, public schools taught at least a rough outline of history. But teaching real history essentially stopped around 1970, arguably because the
So herewith, an effort to educate young Americans.
If you're under 30, for your entire life the U.S. has had plenty of energy. And as far as you know, that's always been true. But what you may not know is that back in 1973--i.e. within the lifetimes of living people--the oil-exporting countries of the middle east decided to try to bring the U.S. to its knees, by stopping the sale of oil to us. This was called an "oil embargo."
The stage for this was set because U.S. oil production started dropping significantly around 1970. Oil companies adjusted by increasing the amount of oil they imported. People who knew the significance of those numbers feared a stock market crash, and began pulling out--triggering a crash that began early in 1973--well before the embargo.
The trigger for the embargo came in October of 1973, when Egypt and Syria, without warning or provocation, launched a surprise attack on Israel. After fighting off the initial wave of attacks, Israel asked the Nixon administration to replenish its military supplies. Nixon responded by using our Air Force to deliver arms to Israel, at the same time as the Soviet Union was re-supplying Egypt and Syrian forces.
In response, four days after the U..S. airlift began, the OPEC nations raised the selling price of their oil by 70 percent, by decree, instantly.
Later we learned that on August 23, 1973, in preparation for the surprise attack that would take place on October 6th, Egypt's president Anwar Sadat asked Saudi Arabia's king Faisal to persuade the members of OPEC to use the "oil weapon" if the U.S. (as expected) helped Israel.
Four months later, 20% of American gasoline stations had no gas.[36] To stretch supplies, stations limited buyers to some arbitrary number of gallons, and people lined up for hours to get any amount. Eight months later the retail price of gasoline in the U.S. was up by about 40 percent. State governments requested citizens not to put up Christmas lights. Oregon banned Christmas and commercial lighting altogether.[18] Politicians called for national rationing.
By mid-1974 the price of oil had quadrupled.
The embargo delayed recovery from the stock market crash that had started early in 1973, and made the crash both longer and deeper than it would otherwise have been.
In response to all this, pro-American people and advocates of the free market suggested it would be a great idea to increase our domestic oil and gas production. They asked the government to open areas off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts for exploration. But Democrat politicians, writers for Time magazine and every "elite" talking-head on the networks dismissed this as stupid. They somberly told us "America will never be energy-independent."
So, brutally slapped down, free-marketers crawled back to mom's basement and started serious drug addictions. U.S. oil and gas production continued to slowly drop, until Barak Obama arrived. And with a wave of his hand, he solved the problem by saying "Let there be lots of oil for my people!" And Lo!, fountains of oil appeared!
Just kidding. What really happened was, a bunch of inventive, hard-working Americans--mostly independent producers risking their own fortunes--found a way to extract large amounts of oil from so-called "tight formations." As a result, U.S. oil production--which had fallen to half its 1970 peak--is back to that peak again.
Upon seeing this astonishing recovery,
- The editors at Time magazine said, "What oil crisis?"
- The talking heads at MSNBC said "Oil is dirty and nasty. We don't like it. Leave it in the ground!"
- Democrats said "The oil companies are poisoning your air and water. We don't need oil."
- Nancy Pelosi said "Ten million barrels per day? Meh, just crumbs!"
- Hilliary Clinton said "(hic!)"
- Barack Obama said "You didn't build that!"
- Rachel Maddow said "I can absolutely promise you this: Donald Trump will never be president."
- Bernie Sanders said "Socialism could have done this more fairly. Take Venezuela, for example."
- Adam Schiff said "This was only possible because Trump was colluding with Russia!"
- Chris Matthews said "Any recovery you're seeing was actually all set up by president Obama (pbuh)."
- The king of Saudi Arabia said "You know, maybe we can made a deal after all."
- Don't believe anything the Lying Mainstream Media tell you.
- Free markets rock.
- Government--particularly when run by Democrats--causes far more problems than it solves.
- Americans are astonishingly inventive, if not blocked by dumbshit politicians trying to buy votes.
- A reliable source of energy is important for virtually all nations.
posted by SF at
1:33 PM
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