The Oil Crisis America Saw Coming

This is an edition of Time-Travel Thursdays, a journey through The Atlantic ’s archives to contextualize the present.

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In December 1987, The Atlantic had some reassuring news for readers: The next oil crisis didn’t have to happen.

The United States had already endured the oil shocks of the 1970s, and Amory B.

Lovins and L.

Hunter Lovins, a pair of then-married environmentalists, argued in this magazine that the country had learned from the experience.

The U.S. had diversified its sources of foreign oil, and the American economy needed less oil to grow, a shift that the Lovinses attributed mainly to efficiency gains, such as better-insulated buildings and more fuel-efficient cars.

Oil production had grown outside OPEC, an organization of oil-exporting states, reducing the world’s reliance on Persian Gulf oil.

Even the Strait of Hormuz, a flash point in the Iran-Iraq War of the ’80s, appeared less threatening to the global supply.

By 1987, less oil was passing through the waterway than earlier in the decade, and the Lovinses believed that reserves and alternative routes could help make up for any sudden cutoffs caused by geopolitical tensions.

The moment offered what the writers called a “unique opportunity”: a reprieve from Middle Eastern dominance of the global oil supply.

“If this interval is frittered away,” they warned, “it could end with the United States, its alternative options expired, needing Middle Eastern oil more than ever.” Nearly four decades later, America is far less vulnerable to foreign-oil disruptions, but it is once again caught in a global oil crisis, and the Strait of Hormuz is back at the center.

Before the Iran war, about a quarter of the world’s maritime oil passed through the strait, roughly three times the daily volume that had passed through in 1987.

The effective closure of the waterway has resulted in global oil inventories falling by more than 500 million barrels since February , and Americans are feeling the effects, as the costs of diesel , air travel , food , and other goods all rise.