Word: gas
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...District of Columbia had to begin odd-even allocation. Independent truckers, who charge that rising fuel prices are depriving them of a livelihood, started a strike that soon led to food shortages, scattered violence and threats of worse to come. Although the Department of Energy had contributed to the gas shortage by urging oil companies to build up their depleted stocks of heating fuel, it was disclosed last week that home fuel prices will be a paralyzing 80¢ per gal. by next winter (up almost 50% from last winter) and there will be shortages...
Across the U.S., as citizens struggle with the irritation of gas lines and dollar-a-gallon prices, a large number persist in believing that the whole mess has been deliberately contrived by the oil companies, aided and abetted by Government collusion or ineptitude. Washington in fact cannot evade the charge of bungling. A few weeks ago the Department of Energy was predicting that gasoline supplies would be more plentiful in June than in May. Now officials confess that they have no idea how much gas drivers can count on buying for the rest of the month, the summer, the year...
...aside 5% of whatever gasoline and diesel fuel it expects to have available each month to be used as state governments direct. It then sets aside as much more as may be demanded by certain priority users?police, for example. After that, it parcels out the remaining supplies among gas stations, essentially equally but with some adjustments; stations in areas where population and consumption have been growing rapidly get more...
...while it is easy enough to blame the Government, the public's "me first" spirit is fouling up matters too. Truckers are now demanding unrestricted access to diesel fuel, while farmers get all they want. Simultaneously, other consumers clamor for exemptions for any gas-rationing system or demand that heating-oil stocks be built up to guard against a cold winter. There is no way that refineries can give farmers and truckers unlimited supplies, turn out maximum supplies of gasoline and build heating-oil inventories?and the Government has failed to set clear priorities...
...plan offered by Representative Toby Moffett of Connecticut to force every driver to choose one day a week on which he would leave his car or cars in the garage (windshield stickers would identify the forbidden day). They also invited Carter to work with them in devising a new gas-rationing plan. Said House Democratic Whip John Brademas of Indiana: "In effect, we told the President, 'The train is leaving the station; would you like to get aboard...