Word: gas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Gas-station closings bring out a suspicious streak in many drivers. Across the country, large numbers of motorists believe that the shortage has been contrived by the oil companies and the Government to push up prices. Says John Langille, a Boston salesman who keeps topping off the tanks of his two cars: "It's the same as in '73. As soon as gas goes to $1.20 a gallon we'll have all we want...
...other factors aggravate the gasoline situation. One is that antipollution regulations require all cars built in the 1975 model year or later to use unleaded gas. A refinery needs 5% to 10% more crude to turn out a gallon of leadfree as opposed to regular gas. More important, stocks of heating oil have dropped dangerously (4.6% below the "minimum acceptable level" for May). Refineries would ordinarily be starting all-out production of gasoline now, to supply the summer driving surge, but the Carter Administration is urging them instead to switch as much output as possible to heating oil, in order...
Some kind of gas rationing may become necessary, but the Administration bungled its proposal and Congress shortsightedly rejected the whole idea. Carter made two serious errors. First, in order to get his new tax on windfall oil profits, he railed so vehemently against oil-company "ripoffs" that he fanned public suspicion that the shortage is a hoax-though the Administration knows quite well it is not. Then the Administration presented a poorly drafted stand-by rationing plan; and when that came under fire, which should have been anticipated, it scrambled madly to find some kind of compromise that could...
...House then thumbed down the plan, 246 to 159. One reason was that the same compromise that placated farm-state Senators angered urban Congressmen. Pennsylvania and California Representatives, whose states would have got less gas than under Carter's original proposal, voted heavily against it. Republicans seized on the chance to voice ideological hostility to Government regulation -and embarrass a Democratic President making an unpopular proposal. "We do not need rationing; we need production!" cried John Ashbrook of Ohio. But the biggest reason for the turndown was simple fear that a vote even for stand-by rationing...
Almost everybody seems to have a story about the energy problem. Secretary of the Treasury Michael Blumenthal phoned his 90-year-old father in California on a Sunday night. "Can't you do something about gas?" the old gentleman asked. The secretary's sister, also living in California, had always made a weekly drive to see their father. That Sunday she had called to say she did not have gas enough for the trip. "Well, Dad," answered Mike, a little extra feeling in his voice, "it's a big problem...