It won’t be anything on the scale of 1973, when President Nixon imposed year round daylight saving time to reduce electricity consumption as well as a 50mph highway speed limit. Nor are we likely to see the thermostat restrictions, or the standby plans for rationing, that were introduced by President Carter in 1979. 

The “oil shocks” of the 1970s were not just from a different era, they were of a different magnitude as well. 

Trump may well step in with some form of oil export controls

Trump may well step in with some form of oil export controls

Yet that does not mean that the American economy is immune to another crisis, nor that we won’t see a dramatic response from the White House – because, in reality, the US could easily run out of oil later this year.  

Rewind only a few weeks, and the market appeared to have decided that the oil crisis was over. After the United States and Israel launched their attack on Iran, the price of Brent Crude, the industry benchmark, spiked up to close on $120 a barrel, doubling in the space of just a few days. There were plenty of alarming predictions of $200 or even $250 a barrel if the war dragged on, and if the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial supply route for Middle Eastern oil, was closed to tanker traffic. In the end it didn’t happen. Oil traded in triple digits for a few weeks, and then as a shaky truce was agreed, drifted back down to around $70, a price that the global economy can live with. 

But that is far........

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