Advice to Trump: Leave the Oil Market Alone

Government controls were responsible for the crises in the 1970s

Letter to The WSJ.

"Allysia Finley (“How America’s Oil and Gas Dominance Has Weakened Iran,” Life Science, March 9) is right to celebrate U.S. energy development but misses an important reason we no longer have 1970s-type energy crises.

The main reasons for the shortages in 1973 and 1979 were U.S. government price and quantity controls on the oil market. Natural-gas prices were also government controlled. While it is true that the Arab embargo of 1973-74 and the Iranian revolution in 1979 did reduce market supply, neither caused the shortages nor the palpable sense of crisis. Had there been no U.S. government controls, the prices of oil and oil products would have risen more and more quickly, but there wouldn’t have been shortages. When controls were lifted in the early 1980s, the age of gas and oil shortages ended.

Ms. Finley includes the first Gulf War alongside the Arab embargo and Iranian revolution. But what happened then proves my point. While prices spiked amid the conflict and Americans feared a return of gas lines, the lines didn’t materialize because prices were no longer controlled. We also didn’t experience supply crises in the 2000s or during the Arab Spring.

Of course, Americans are upset by higher prices, but we’ve lived with high gas and oil prices before and we will again. More worrisome is the report that President Trump wants to do something to lower gas prices. The last time the government “did something” we had oil and gas crises lasting a decade.

My advice: leave the oil market alone.

Prof. Em. Peter Z. Grossman

Butler University"