When Milwaukee ran out of gas — thanks to oil embargo
Hurricane Harvey sent gas prices soaring this month.
It could have been worse.
At least we could find gas.
That wasn’t always the case during the energy crisis of 1973-’74.
The Middle East oil embargo, in retaliation for U.S. support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War in October 1973, put a stopper on the flow of oil and gasoline into the U.S.
In response, President Richard Nixon, in a nationwide address on Nov. 25, 1973, called for a number of conservation measures, including lowering the speed limit on interstate highways (the 55-mph speed limit went into effect the following January) and voluntary closing of gas stations on Sundays.
According to an informal Milwaukee Journal survey, about 75% of Milwaukee-area stations complied, although some station owners didn’t have enough gas to sell anyway.
“We invented the Nixon ban — three months ago,” the owner of Gary’s Citgo Service at 7605 W. Lisbon Ave., told The Journal’s Neil D. Rosenberg in a story published Dec. 10, 1973.
By the end of December, according to Journal reports, gas prices had jumped in Milwaukee from around 37 cents a gallon during the summer to 44.9 cents.
Stations weren’t closing just on Sundays anymore. In a story in The Journal on Dec. 31, 1973, Arthur D. Johnson, executive vice president of the Wisconsin Retail Gasoline Dealers Association, said that 80% would be closed on New Year’s Eve, a Monday, and 90% on New Year’s Day.
“They just don’t have the gas,” he told The Journal.
On Jan. 26, the Sentinel reported that about 12% of the gas stations in Milwaukee County had already run through their January fuel allotments.
Consumers were part of the problem, the Sentinel reported Jan. 31, 1974. Worried stations would be out of gas, drivers were “topping out” — pulling up to service stations and filling up their tanks, even for just a few gallons.
By February, waiting in line for gas was all but a given for Milwaukee drivers.
A woman waiting in line at a Standard station at N. 25th St. and W. Wisconsin Ave. told The Journal in a story published Feb. 26 that she had passed 12 stations before finding one open.
“I’ve been looking all morning,” she said. “I waited 45 minutes at a Clark station at 55th and Center, and there were still cars in front of me as I went to work.”
According to an American Automobile Association survey cited in The Journal on Feb. 22, one out of four stations had run out of gas. Johnson, of the Gas Dealers Association, in a Sentinel story four days later, put the number at “better than 50%.”
In March, the spigots opened a bit, but prices gushed higher, too, as monthly price updates when into effect. The Journal reported March 1, 1974, that one chain, Spur discount gas stations, was charging 58.8 cents per gallon, up 13 cents from the month before.
Even after the oil embargo ended March 17, Milwaukee was still feeling its impact. One out of five stations in Milwaukee
ran out of gas before the end of March, according to a AAA survey reported by The Journal on March 30.
But by midsummer, The Journal reported on Aug. 1, 1974, there was enough gas available that prices actually dropped at the pump, from an average of 55.5 cents a gallon in Milwaukee in July to 55.1 cents in August — still, up 23% from where prices had been in December and nearly 50% higher than where they had been the summer before.