WI: OPEC does not lift its Oil Embargo in 1974?

well i would see the USA providing for massive instability in the middle east.

however on the home front, the houseing market would collapse as new home buyers would not be buying in the burbs.. but closer to work.

I could also see this forcing the auto makers into making VASTLY more energy efficient vehicles.. the government would support expansion fo the Nuclear Plants, as well as massive drilling to begin again int eh United States, its not that we dont have oil folks.. we just dont tap it.. other ideas would get serious cash infusions such as wind, solar and hydro electric.

If they pissed us off enough .. and we decided enough is enough and noone would do this to us again, then the middle east just killed itself as we shift to a different energy source.

other nations would pick up the slack to some extent though since they would want our cash. (Norway, Canada and even USSR may be willing to sell oil to us, as long as we played ball with them to some extent.. )

I could actually see OIL in the US becoming nationalized in such an emergency.

just depends on how we react to the problem.. i would love to go with the optimistic ideas.. but unfortunately think it would be negative..
 
Well in the wake of the embargo the US became politically isolated for a few years as Canada, France, Great Britain, and Japan were all horrified at the idea of losing the oil imports (Though Japan only suffered a 5% embargo on its fuels) so it would be interesting to see how the US would respond politically.

Say for example they launched an invasion of Saudi Arabia. That would cause a massive spike in oil prices and begin to severely worsen the economic situation in the West. Would the rest of NATO support such a strike? or would they sit back and see what happens. Or perhaps even intervene against the US? I can't see France and Britain being to supportive especially after the US blocked the their taking of the Suez Canal.
 
Canada was mostly self-sufficient in oil during the 1970s, though due to lack of a fully national pipeline network, Eastern Canada had to use imported oil. A distribution problem, not a supply problem. :)
 
Cutting a deal

If it gets bad enough, realpolitic can get very ugly. The USA--or any other nation--won't allow a minor country to cripple them long term. The USA might just cut a deal of some sort with the USSR behind th3 scenes. It could range from pulling support away from an anti-communist government or rebellion, to recognising Cuba, to whatever--and the USSR does nothing when the USA goes and collects an oil rich natin or two. Or it could be a few arab leaders get midnight visits from men in black-given a brief verbal warning--and the black clad visitors leave. The visitors simply mention that leaders can end up very personally dead if need be. If the USA feels genuinely threatened, it can get nasty!
 
Those Arabs they think they own that oil. Dont they realise they are just looking after it for us.

Seriously petrodollars have kept the arab world relatively stable but backward politically and financially. Without oil money flowing in to keep the population fed and quiet the current troubles in arabian countries would be a shadow of the problems that they would suffer.

You cant eat, drink or export sand and take away the oil and thats basically what they have sand and religion.
 
In an analogy; Australia recently had 14 years of drought, so people installed grey water systems for their gardens, installed water tanks for their roofs and water saving fixtures. Then the drought broke, but all of the water saving/recycling infrastructure is still in place and being used so demand for mains water has been permanently reduced.

I could see the same happening for oil with a prolonged embargo. People would make better use of public transportation, switch to different heating and a myriad of other changes which will endure long after the oil is available.
 
Well in the wake of the embargo the US became politically isolated for a few years as Canada, France, Great Britain, and Japan were all horrified at the idea of losing the oil imports (Though Japan only suffered a 5% embargo on its fuels) so it would be interesting to see how the US would respond politically.

Say for example they launched an invasion of Saudi Arabia. That would cause a massive spike in oil prices and begin to severely worsen the economic situation in the West. Would the rest of NATO support such a strike? or would they sit back and see what happens. Or perhaps even intervene against the US? I can't see France and Britain being to supportive especially after the US blocked the their taking of the Suez Canal.
Good point actualy. Would NATO be able to survive such crisis?
 

Pangur

Donor
Invasion

I notice that some of the replies suggest that the US would invade a nation to `collect' oil supplies. Lets get real here; the oil embargo was late 1973 - the tail end of the Vietnam war and the anti-war movement was still a going concern. Secondly the draft ended in June 1973, so where was the large army going to come from? Next consideration is this' OK so you invade and occupy say Libya- what do you with the Libyians ?

I can not see this happening. The more likely scenario is that they would have started drilling in Alaska and what not and there is possibility that Israel would get dropped.
 
The American auto industry did not learn anything from the 1974 embargo or late 70's/early 80's gas price spikes.

Detroit's solution at the time: adapt low-compression iron gasoline blocks for diesel detonation. You can predict what happened.

I predict that a prolonged embargo would only boost Japanese imports to the US to a level much greater than OTL. This is only iff Detroit can't develop more fuel-efficient gasoline cars, or an "intermediate sized car" with a true diesel engine (perhaps a design sourced from Europe and re-engineered with more pistons and displacement).

Coal can be converted to diesel through hydrocarbon chemistry. Perhaps America could keep consumers happy and provide bigger cars with reliable diesel engines. Instead, GM cheaped out and created diesel-gas hybrid engines which blew up holes in the block.
 
It would be war. Remember that after Eisenhower's interstate road plan and the development of the suburbs America is set on cheap oil to fuel its economy. like the Japanese before WW2 a sustained cutoff of oil would be considered an act of war. Either you submit or you attack. i think OPEC would reconsider their position with the US Navy streaming towards them. On a side note the SUV originally was a work vehicle before the soccer Moms decided it wasn't cool to drive a mini van. There will always be a demand for pickups and SUV's in rural areas and the construction trades. A Leaf can't handle these jobs.
 
Top