Good news about shortages can also be bad news
The nation's gasoline situation is beginning to resemble a good-news-bad-news joke. The good news: the shortages that appeared menacing in early May have eased, just in time to promise that the majority of motorists setting out on Memorial Day drives could find enough fuel to get home again. That is also the bad news: the improvement is likely to lessen pressure on the Administration and Congress to work out a coherent energy strategy. On the Administration side, the Department of Energy continues to go through a startling series of switches on gas policy. Congress, in a mood somewhere between anarchy and revolt, appears unable to do anything beyond rejecting whatever the Administration proposes.
No thanks to either, gasoline lines in panic-stricken California dwindled dramatically last week. Waiting times averaged only 20 minutes, and at a few stations there were no lines at all. As the weekend began, supplies were still tight and inconveniences abounded in much of the nation. Motorists stopping at gas stations along New Jersey's Garden State Parkway were restricted to $3 maximum purchases, which put little more than three gallons in their tanks and would move gas guzzlers a mere 30 miles. But in resort areas from Cape Cod to Michigan's Upper Peninsula, enough gas appeared available to handle holiday crowds.
The easing was traced to several causes. Some states did not need all the gas allotted to them in May to make sure that police cars, fire trucks and ambulances kept running; they are now releasing some for sale to individual drivers. Many gas stations that angered drivers by shortening hours or closing on Sundays earlier in the month saved enough fuel to have some left to dispense on the Memorial Day weekend. There were indications that motorists were curtailing driving a bit too, and in California preholiday freeway traffic, after a sharp drop, was still about 5% below normal. Across the nation, airline, train and bus travel boomed.
Looking ahead, Deputy Secretary of Energy John O'Leary told Congress last week that gasoline supplies this summer are likely to fall only 3% to 4% below 1978, and might equal last year's level. That would still leave a shortage, since some 3% more cars, trucks and buses are roaming the open road now than a year ago. But the most pressing problem may be shifting from gas to diesel fuel. Oil companies are dribbling out to distributors only 55% to 85% as much diesel fuel as a year ago. Aviation fuel supply is also tight.
O'Leary unfortunately compounded the confusion. In April, President Carter asserted that stocks of crude oil were dangerously low and had to be rebuilt. Result: oil companies obediently stored crude that they normally would have refined into gasoline. Last week O'Leary said the oil companies had been too "conservative" and urged them to reduce stocks of both crude oil and gasoline in order to make more gas available now.