Word: doe
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Price gouging can be punished by a fine of $10,000. A retailer in Boston who charged $1.57 for unleaded was hit with a civil suit by federal officials; a U.S. District Court ordered him to roll the price back 70?. Despite such actions, however, black marketeers vastly outnumber DOE inspectors. "If we ever have the personnel and the time to investigate, we could uncover some incredible stuff," says a DOE official. But the department, which is scheduled to have 800 inspectors by mid-1980, needs thousands to enforce the scheduled prices. It has little prospect of getting them...
...seems simple so far, but the rules require 400 pages of DOE instructions. Allocations are expressed not in gallons but as a percentage of what each individual customer, wholesaler and retailer, received in a given base period. What base period? Well, it can differ from customer to customer. The oil companies must work out not only how much they supplied each customer in the same month of last year but also how much they supplied, on average, in a five-month period from October 1978 to February 1979. If the latter is at least 10% higher than the corresponding month...
...DOE names the priority customers, like farmers, but makes no attempt to change the list quickly or to check that the customers really need what they ask for. Farmers, long after spring planting has been completed, can simply say that they need so many gallons, and the local distributor must supply that amount. The result is oversupply and hoarding in agricultural areas...
...from 3% to 5% so that spot shortages could be eased, and the five-month-average base was introduced in an effort to deal with seasonal population shifts-but the problems have not been solved. Criticisms are now mounting; last week the state of Maryland filed a lawsuit against DOE, challenging the allocation system as unfair. Says Economist Walter Heller: "I've heard it said that if God wanted us to have gasoline, he would never have created the Department of Energy...
According to DOE estimates, 364,000 bbl. of oil a day-about 2% of the national consumption-would be saved by thus regulating room temperature and hot water levels. Understandably, certain buildings would be exempt from the ukase: hospitals, schools, museums, zoos, laboratories and places used for the storage of food and other perishables...