And some not so great, sigh. More about the not so great, later. While researching to verify Fox New’s statement that oil imports for 1973 were 35%, I ran across a good article at the Wiki on the 1973 Oil Crisis. Fascinating article, lots of details I had forgotten about. How many of us remember what initiated that first Oil Crisis? I didn’t.
The 1973 oil crisis began on October 17, 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC, consisting of the Arab members of OPEC plus Egypt and Syria) announced, as a result of the ongoing Yom Kippur War, that they would no longer ship oil to nations that had supported Israel in its conflict with Syria and Egypt (the United States, its allies in Western Europe, and Japan).
There is also a fascinating chart right beneath that opening statement of the article, showing the price history of oil from 1861 through 2007. Wow, the spike now is almost as big as the spike of 1973 and 1979 combined. The price of oil did not pass $40 per barrel until sometime after 2001, I can’t tell exactly from the chart. Even when historical prices are adjusted for inflation into 2007 dollars, we only crossed $40 one time, at the end of the run up from the 1979 crisis. Today it is $140 plus. The cost of crude has more than trippled in less than 7 years. Mind boggling.
I have not yet read it all, but also looks a very good source of accurate facts to help explain how we got here from where we were in 1973. Be careful if you read it, the data does tend to lead you to some rather disturbing conclusions. Have a look, the link is above.
I will write a separate piece on the not so good information later, but don’t want to let this much to wait. The other issue is one source that is giving data in a very confusing way. Whether deliberate or accidental, it sure does present golden opportunities to distort the data. I need to do some more homework on that one.
Misinformation, hype, emotional arguments are all on the agenda for an article on how much they are hurting us in trying to solve the energy issues, so I will wait till I have that one finished and use it there, it will be a good example.
I have added the Required Reading tag to this article.
Rix
