That contrasts sharply to the 1970s oil crisis, when the 1973 embargo was in Arab retaliation to U.S. support of Israel, and in 1979 when religious revolutionaries in Iran overthrew the shah, cut off its oil spigot and kept 52 Americans hostage for 444 days. Some worried erroneously that the world was running out of oil. And the energy efficiency movement had yet to catch on. Today, an economic boom has drowned out the grumbling from the gas pumps. In February, Americans went on a buying binge, even as Northeast heating oil prices surged.
Economic times are good.
There's not a great sense of crisis mentality. But less of it is concentrated in the Middle East. More important, say economists, the United States is less dependent on oil today. Once widely used by industry, at power plants and for heating, oil now plays a modest role in non-transportation sectors. Two decades ago, oil purchases amounted to 8 percent of all the goods and services purchased by Americans, compared with 3 percent today, the Energy Department says.