Gasoline Shortage Research Articles

Crisis and Mood: Waiting in Line for Gasoline During the 1979 Oil Shock in the United States

The topic of crisis remains relevant. During this study's writing and editing process, the COVID-19 coronavirus disease appeared on the world's stage. Further, it is uncanny that in the final stage of the study's 2021 publication, the United States Atlantic Seaboard experienced a gasoline shortage after a cyberattack disabled a major pipeline resulting in crisis lines at gas stations. The study compares the mood of drivers waiting in line for a necessity in a national crisis, in this case, gasoline, during the oil shock of 1979 in the United States to those not waiting shortly after the crisis ended. It also examines how position in such crisis lines affects mood. All subjects answered yes-no adjective questions for anxiety, hostility, and positive affect. Line position was determined by counting the number of cars from the pump. Those waiting showed more hostility, anxiety, positive affect, and uncertainty than those not in line. During the crisis, those farthest from the pump showed greater hostility and less positive affect than those closer, but no difference in anxiety, with uncertainty moderating positive affect but not anxiety or hostility. The crisis occurred at a time when smartphones did not exist. The results suggest smartphones during a crisis would probably have their most significant positive impact if used to reduce uncertainty in fulfilling consumer information needs. Crisis, by its nature, is an unpredictable phenomenon that may explain why there are far more studies of the routine lines encountered in daily living, such as those at airports or call centers, than those experienced in crisis.

A lasso regression-based forecasting model for daily gasoline consumption: Türkiye Case

Gasoline is one of the most sought-after resources in the world, where the need for energy is indispensable and continuously increasing for human life today. A shortage of gasoline may negatively affect the economies of countries. Therefore, analysis and estimates about gasoline consumption are critical. Better forecast performance on gasoline consumption can serve the policymakers, managers, researchers, and other gasoline sector stakeholders. This study focuses on forecasting daily gasoline consumption in Türkiye using a lasso regression-based methodology. The methodology involves three main stages: cleaning data, extracting/selecting features, and forecasting future consumption. Additionally, Ridge Regression is employed for performance comparison. Results from the proposed methodology inform strategies for gasoline consumption, enabling more accurate planning and trade activities. The study emphasizes the importance of daily forecasts in deciding import quantities, facilitating timely planning, and establishing a well-organized gasoline supply chain system. Application of this methodology in Türkiye can pave the way for globally coordinated steps in gasoline consumption, establishing efficient gasoline supply chain systems. The findings provide insights for establishing a smooth and secure gasoline collection/distribution infrastructure, offering effective solutions to both public and private sectors. The proposed forecasting methodology serves as a reference for ensuring uninterrupted gasoline supply and maximizing engagement between customers and suppliers. Applied and validated for Türkiye, this methodology can guide global efforts, fostering planned approaches to gasoline consumption and enhancing supply chain systems.

Social-Aware Long-Distance Trip Planner for Electric Vehicles Using Genetic Algorithm

Abstract In the past decade, the number of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) on the road has been growing rapidly in response to global climate change and cyclic gasoline shortages. Due to the limited driving range of most commercial BEVs, individuals who use BEVs for long-distance travel tend to spend much more time on the road than owners of traditional internal combustion engine vehicles. To reduce travel time in long-distance trips, a social-aware trip planner is necessary to coordinate driving speed, vehicle charging, and social activities (e.g., dining, visit of places of interest). This paper formulates this travel time minimization problem into a mixed-integer programming model and utilizes genetic algorithm (GA) to solve for the optimal driving speed, vehicle charging, and the schedule of dining. The proposed planner is first tested numerically based on two real-world routes. Then, Monte Carlo simulations are performed to give a thorough analysis on the performance of the proposed planner. The simulation results show that the proposed method outperforms the baseline on both routes. Additionally, real-world tests are conducted to further validate the accuracy of the mixed-integer programming model.

PERTAMINA AND SAUDI ARAMCO JOINT VENTURE PROJECT OF REFINERY BUILDING IN INDONESIA AS INDONESIAN STRATEGY FOR ENERGY SECURITY

Indonesia’s demand for energy to maintain its industrial development has grown significantly. As a consequence, Jakarta needs new energy sources to support the shortage of diesel and gasoline as the main resources. Saudi Aramco has been a vital partner to fulfil the energy supply considering its source and production capacity. This paper will scrutinise the joint venture project between Indonesian oil company, Pertamina and Saudi Arabian oil company, Saudi Aramco as an Indonesian strategy to overcome its growing need for oil and pursue its energy security. This qualitative research will employ the concept of the International Joint Venture (IJV to examine the role of the government of Indonesia in the negotiation and Implementation process and the challenges in implementing the project.

The impact of gasoline shortages on public bike-sharing systems

PurposeThis paper aims to analyze the effect of a recent disruption of Mexico's gasoline supply chain on the usage of public bike-sharing systems in Mexico City and Guadalajara.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use a detailed data set to understand the usage patterns of Ecobici and Mibici. The authors assess both systems with a differences-in-differences econometric model using the least popular stations as a control group.FindingsThe authors find that the number of rides increased significantly shortly after the event because less popular stations became more utilized.Social implicationsThe authors show that when the effects of gasoline shortages were noticeable, usage rates increased in Guadalajara and Mexico City, but the rise primarily came from the users selecting more bikes from the less popular stations. Therefore, the authors show that citizens in both cities regarded bike-sharing as an adequate means of transportation, maximizing system usage during a disruptive time. This finding suggests that cities should invest in improving public bike-sharing systems to reduce carbon emissions and increase their population's well-being.Originality/valueThe authors use a publicly available data set to understand how citizens answered to a major disruption. Furthermore, this is one of the first papers that align supply chain risk management with sustainable transportation and analyzes its effects on citizen behavior in a Latin American setting.

The Role of Natural Gas Utilities and Pipeline Operators in a Decarbonized Economy

The natural gas industry has a track record of sharing lessons learned from unfortunate events, leading to initiatives and investments to improve resiliency and reliability. The Columbia Gas of Massachusetts over‐pressurization incident in 2018, led to industry‐wide improvements in natural gas pipeline safety. The Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility incident resulted in the implementation of American Petroleum Institute (API) storage field standards as regulations. More recently, the industry is still coming to grips with fallout from the February 2021 winter storm events in Texas, when natural gas was unavailable to fuel electricity generation and for residential and commercial/industrial use. Lastly, the May 2021 Colonial Pipeline cyber security breach led to gasoline shortages in downstream markets and will likely lead to new and more comprehensive standards and regulations for pipeline safety and compliance to guard against future cyber‐attacks. While pipeline failures are rare, when they do occur, they are high‐impact events with potentially devastating and costly consequences. According to the Pipeline Hazardous Materials and Safety Administration (PHMSA) trend data, pipeline incidents resulted in 55 fatalities, 272 injuries, and over $3.3 billion in total costs between 2016–2020.

Poisonings After a Hurricane: Lessons From the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System (NJPIES) During and Following Hurricane Sandy.

Hurricane Sandy made landfall in New Jersey on October 29, 2012, resulting in widespread power outages and gasoline shortages. These events led to potentially toxic exposures and the need for information related to poisons/toxins in the environment. This report characterizes the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System (NJPIES) call patterns in the days immediately preceding, during, and after Hurricane Sandy to identify areas in need of public health education and prevention. We examined NJPIES case data from October through December 2012. Most Sandy-related calls had been coded as such by NJPIES staff. Additional Sandy-related cases were identified by performing a case narrative review. Descriptive analyses were performed for timing, case frequencies, exposure substances, gender, caller site, type of information requests, and other data. The most frequent Sandy-related exposures were gasoline and carbon monoxide (CO). Gasoline exposure cases were predominantly males and CO exposure cases, females (P < 0.0001). Other leading reasons for Sandy-related calls were poison information, food poisoning/spoilage information, and water contamination. This analysis identified the need for enhanced public health education and intervention to improve the handling of gasoline and encourage the proper use of gasoline-powered generators and cleaning and cooking equipment, thus reducing toxic exposures.

Predicting gasoline shortage during disasters using social media

Shortage of gasoline is a common phenomenon during onset of forecasted disasters like hurricanes. Prediction of future gasoline shortage can guide agencies in pushing supplies to the correct regions and mitigating the shortage. We demonstrate how to incorporate social media data into gasoline supply decision making. We develop a systematic approach to examine social media posts like tweets and sense future gasoline shortage. We build a four-stage shortage prediction methodology. In the first stage, we filter out tweets related to gasoline. In the second stage, we use an SVM-based tweet classifier to classify tweets about the gasoline shortage, using unigrams and topics identified using topic modeling techniques as our features. In the third stage, we predict the number of future tweets about gasoline shortage using a hybrid loss function, which is built to combine ARIMA and Poisson regression methods. In the fourth stage, we employ Poisson regression to predict shortage using the number of tweets predicted in the third stage. To validate the methodology, we develop a case study that predicts the shortage of gasoline, using tweets generated in Florida during the onset and post landfall of Hurricane Irma. We compare the predictions to the ground truth about gasoline shortage during Irma, and the results are very accurate based on commonly used error estimates.

Financial impact of the shortage and increase of gasoline in the state of Guanajuato

This work is focused on the financial impact that the state of Guanajuato suffered in the first months of this year due to the shortage of gasoline and the increase in its price, the entrepreneurs of the state of Guanajuato are the main affected by the situation that is being experienced in the state since they are quantifying the affectation within the tourist, commercial and industrial sector that are the main source of wealth of the state In the economic report carried out by CITY BANAMEX, we are informed at the beginning of January that the losses on the Gross Domestic Product GDP are in a range of 0.1% to 0.3% due to the shortage of fuel. The crisis due to the shortage of gasoline forced the state of Guanajuato to set the objective of how to face future contingencies and thus be able to count on infrastructure and integral actions.

Teoría del encuadre y plataformas sociodigitales de interacción: un análisis de coyuntura

&lt;p&gt;Con la intención de contribuir al estudio de los fenómenos sociocomunicativos desde la corriente sociológica de la Teoría del Encuadre (Framing), se hace un análisis de memes compartidos en Facebook y Twitter, relacionados con la escasez de gasolina en México durante enero de 2019, derivada del combate al robo de combustible. El objetivo central es identificar la manera como un conjunto de memes en la Internet ha sido empleado para dar lugar a la diseminación y reproducción de encuadres en relación con dicho suceso de alto impacto mediático. Los principales resultados muestran que, a partir de 55 memes registrados, se identificaron dos tipos principales de encuadre: amplificación y extensión de marcos.&lt;/p&gt;

Hurricane Sandy Exposure and the Mental Health of World Trade Center Responders.

The psychological consequences of a second disaster on populations exposed to an earlier disaster have rarely been studied prospectively. Using a pre- and postdesign, we examined the effects of Hurricane Sandy on possible World Trade Center (WTC) related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD Checklist score of ≥ 50) and overall depression (major depressive disorder [MDD]; Patient Health Questionnaire depression score of ≥ 10) among 870 WTC responders with a follow-up monitoring visit at the Long Island WTC Health Program during the 6 months post-Hurricane Sandy. The Hurricane Sandy exposures evaluated were damage to home (8.3%) and to possessions (7.8%), gasoline shortage (24.1%), prolonged power outage (42.7%), and filing a Federal Emergency Management Agency claim (11.3%). A composite exposure score also was constructed. In unadjusted analyses, Hurricane Sandy exposures were associated with 1.77 to 5.38 increased likelihood of PTSD and 1.58 to 4.13 likelihood of MDD; odds ratios for ≥ 3 exposures were 6.47 for PTSD and 6.45 for MDD. After adjusting for demographic characteristics, WTC exposure, pre-Hurricane Sandy mental health status, and time between assessments, reporting ≥ 3 Hurricane Sandy exposures was associated with a 3.29 and 3.71 increased likelihood of PTSD and MDD, respectively. These findings underscore the importance of assessing the impact of a subsequent disaster in ongoing responder health surveillance programs.

Comments: Ending the US Export Ban

Editor's column US companies began selling crude oil on the international market last month shortly after the US Congress ended the country’s 40-year-old ban on oil exports. The action is another byproduct of the US shale revolution and will do little to settle the current fight over global oil market share that has driven oil prices to decade lows. Congress enacted the ban in 1975, after the OPEC oil embargoes against the US in the 1970s drove gasoline retail prices higher and caused regional gasoline shortages. There has been an occasional relaxing of the ban, such as in the 1980s when shipments of crude began being allowed to Canada and in the 1990s when sales of Alaskan North Slope crude were permitted to relieve a glut of heavy oil on the US west coast. Last year, the ban on shipments of condensate was lifted, and both Pioneer Natural Resources and Enterprise Product Partners began selling condensate overseas. The first sales of US crude took place on 31 December and in the first week of January as ConocoPhillips and Enterprise shipped cargoes from Texas to Europe. The recent drilling boom in south and west Texas has ushered in a buildup in infrastructure to the refineries along the US Gulf Coast, which will make export easier. The shale boom made the argument in favor of the embargo seem antiquated. After falling steadily since 1985, US crude production began increasing in 2009 with the sharp rise in shale output. In 2009, US output rose to 5.4 million B/D and increased to 9.3 million B/D last year, as the country almost doubled production, according to the US Energy Information Administration. The US now rivals Saudi Arabia and Russia in terms of energy output and its crude production now surpasses its oil imports. In the short term, US crude exports should have little effect on the global oil market or oil prices. The world is currently awash in supply and shipping US crude to far-away places such as Asia is uneconomic compared with cheaper oil offered from the Middle East. But in the long term, when the global supply/demand balance tightens, Asia will have another option for crude, especially after a planned expansion of the Panama Canal is completed. Latin America may be a natural outlet for US oil as its refineries are geared to running the light, sweet crude such as that which comes from the Eagle Ford Shale. Most of the refineries on the US Gulf Coast are built to process heavier crude. Shale producers will have another market for their crude, which should encourage production once oil price levels rise again. A study by Columbia University predicted that lifting the export ban could increase US crude oil production by 1.2 million B/D. The American Petroleum Institute, which lobbied to lift the ban, said the US will now be a major player in the global oil market. While that is not likely in the short_ term, lifting the ban does add another wrinkle to the current battle over global oil market share, which has changed OPEC strategy and caused crude prices to plummet. JPT

Technology Focus: Bit Technology and Bottomhole Assemblies (December 2015)

Technology Focus A bronze statue of Will Rogers provided by the state of Oklahoma in 1939 stands in a unique position in front of the entrance to the US House of Representatives chambers. Of the 100 statues provided by the 50 states, only Rogers’ statue is pointed toward the entrance of the House. Rogers, who derived much of his commentary material from Congress, said before he died, “Even after I’m gone, I’m gonna keep an eye on you.” In January 1975, President Gerald Ford delivered his first State of the Union address in the House of Representatives chambers. The United States had just survived the oil embargo of 1973, which resulted in a shortage of gasoline and high energy prices. Energy independence was the focus of his address to the nation and the impetus behind the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975. The act contained three main components: (1) oil conservation through vehicle-fuel-economy standards, (2) the creation and direction of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and (3) the prohibition on crude-oil exports. While no legislation is perfect, the conservation of oil and the establishment of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve are ideas that still have merit today. But is the prohibition on crude-oil exports still necessary? The landscape has changed. The US in now a swing producer of crude. President Ford continued the vision statement in his State of the Union address. He pointed to goals for dependable and domestic energy. The loftiest goal he stated was, “We must develop our energy technology and resources so that the United States has the ability to supply a significant share of the energy needs of the free world by the end of this century.” While we did not achieve energy independence at the end of the century, that goal is now reachable. It was technology in oil exploration and extraction (shale oil) that increased our production by more than 80% since 2008. Demand has not kept up. Since June of 2014, oil prices have dropped 60%. The duration of the current low prices has already exceeded all downturns since the fall of 1985, when the Saudis, while losing market share to other nation members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, increased oil production to 10 million B/D. Technology will play an increasing role in the lower-commodity-price environment. Because horizontal and extended-reach wellbores account for the majority of the wells being drilled, technologies geared around that development will produce the highest returns. The understanding and proper application of rotary-steerable systems will continue to provide a step change in the way fields are developed. Bit technology continues to improve and innovate. It will take performance and skill by both operators and service companies to compete in today’s low-price environment. Technology developed and implemented during the boom will receive closer scrutiny and evaluation during the bust. For good fortune, legislators rub the left shoe of the Will Rogers statue on the way to chambers. That shoe has become worn, like that of the statue of St. Peter in Rome, by the touch of the devoted. In January of 2017, the US will swear in a new president and a new class of legislators. May the tradition continue and Will Rogers’ good fortune encourage sensible energy policy and favorable commodity prices. JPT Recommended additional reading at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org. SPE 173861 Precise Quantification of Deformation of the BHA for Improved Performance in Directional Drilling by Przemyslaw Kukian, Weatherford, et al. SPE/IADC 173168 Freeing Differential Stuck Pipe With Nitrogen Reduces Lost-in- Hole Drillstrings Significantly by Norbert Heitmann, Schlumberger, et al. SPE 174798 Analytical Model To Estimate the Directional Tendency of Point- and Push-the-Bit BHAs by Yuan Zhang, Halliburton, et al.

Media in the New Democracies of Post-Communist Eastern Europe

Growing up in Bulgaria during the “transition” years, as a then fifteen-year old, I spent the summer of 1990 queuing up at the neighborhood newsstand waiting for the daily delivery of freshly printed newspapers. Shortages of goods, including food and gasoline, caused long lines in front of many stores, but the crowd waiting at the kiosk was eager to read about the latest political developments, and especially popular were the newspapers published by the newly established opposition parties. While there was no scarcity of political news via television and radio, there was always something special about the print media, much of which, including entertainment weeklies, were such a novelty. Twenty or so years later, I spent another summer among newspapers, in the archives of the National Library in Sofia, poring through the pages and—with no digitization of archives—collecting photographs of news articles published before each of the national legislative elections since 1990. Much has changed in the media environment since then, yet the study of media in post-communist societies and especially its relations to voters, parties, and politics in general is still in its infancy.

Dog Days

Dog Days Judy Budnitz (bio) Keywords Judy Budnitz, apocalypse THE MAN IN THE DOG SUIT whines outside the door. “Again?” sighs my mother. “Where’s my gun?” says my dad. “We’ll take care of it this time,” my older brothers say. They go outside. We hear the shouts and the scuffle, and whimpers as he crawls away up the street. My brothers come back in. “That takes care of that,” they say, rubbing their hands together. “Damn nutcase,” my dad growls. But the next day he is back. His dog suit is shabby. The zipper’s gone; the front’s held together with safety pins. He looks like a mutt. His tongue is flat and pink like a slice of bologna. He pants at me. “Mom,” I call, “he’s back.” My mother sighs, then comes to the door and looks at him. He cocks his head at her. “Oh, look at him, he looks hungry,” my mother says. “He looks sad.” I say, “He smells.” [End Page 60] “No collar,” says my mother. “He must be a stray.” “Mother,” I say. “He’s a man in a dog suit.” He sits up and begs. My mother doesn’t look at me. She reaches out and strokes the man’s head. He blinks at her longingly. “Go get a plate,” she tells me. “See what you can dig out of the garbage.” “Dad’s going to be mad,” I say. “Just do it,” she says. So I do it, because I have no excuses, there’s nothing left to do, no school, no nothing. No place to go. People don’t leave their houses. They sit and peer out the windows and wait. Outside it’s perfectly quiet, no crickets, no katydids. I go back to the door and lay the plate on the stoop. My mother and I watch as he buries his face in the dirty scraps. He licks the plate clean and looks up at us. “Good dog,” my mother says. “He’s a man,” I say. “Some retard-weirdo.” He leans against my mother’s leg. My mother doesn’t even look at me. “Not a word to your father, Lisa,” she says, and she goes inside and slams the door. I sit down on the stoop. The man sits next to me. He smells dirty and sweet, like garbage on a hot day. His eyes are big and brown. His face is lost in tangled hair. He scratches himself. I sit there and breathe his smell and wonder if he has fleas. Finally I reach out and touch his head. The fur is matted and stiff. I touch a ragged ear, then give it a yank. He doesn’t even blink. Of course. It’s not his real ear. I pat his head, and stroke it, and his eyes sort of melt and blur on me the way a dog’s eyes will when he’s happy. Then I stop and give him a shove, then a kick, then I chase him away so my father won’t find him when he comes home from hunting. It is so deathly quiet. I can hear him panting, his four-legged scamper scuttling on the sidewalk for a long time. LAST FEBRUARY was when things started happening. The plant closed. That meant my dad was out of work and sulking around the house all day. He’d sit and drink in front of the TV, his face big and red and his eyes all tiny from the drinking. He’d sit all scrunched up in the chair, his big head right on his shoulders like he had no neck at all. He’d watch the morning news, the news at noon, the evening news. “Aren’t you going to look for another job?” my mother would ask. My dad would point to the TV screen and say, “What’s the use?” Then March came. Some of the stores in town closed up, and the movie [End Page 61] place, and two of the gas stations. No new stock coming in, they said. The government needs supplies, they said. Gasoline shortage. You understand. April: My school closed...

Hurricane Sandy: Shared Trauma and Therapist Self-Disclosure

Hurricane Sandy was one of the most devastating storms to hit the United States in history. The impact of the hurricane included power outages, flooding in the New York City subway system and East River tunnels, disrupted communications, acute shortages of gasoline and food, and a death toll of 113 people. In addition, thousands of residences and businesses in New Jersey and New York were destroyed. This article chronicles the first author’s personal and professional experiences as a survivor of the hurricane, more specifically in the dual roles of provider and trauma victim, involving informed self-disclosure with a patient who was also a victim of the hurricane. The general analytic framework of therapy is evaluated in the context of the shared trauma faced by patient and provider alike in the face of the hurricane, leading to important implications for future work on resilience and recovery for both the therapist and patient.

Performance evaluation for Bioethanol production in three reactors: Batch, packed bed and Fluidized bed bio-reactors

Ethanol demand has continued to grow, both as an alternative fuel and as a petroleum fuel extender because of gasoline shortages. Ethanol production from renewable carbohydrate materials has attracted worldwide interest, and much research has focused on ethanol production using immobilized viable microbial cells in continuous systems. Biochemical pathway, the main reactor used for fermentation is classical well-mixed reactor need to be improved to the continuous reactor to reduce the operation cost, product inhibition and wash out. Immobilized biomass (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) activity has been given more attention, since it has been acknowledged to play a significant role in bioreactor performance. An attempt has been made to compare the production of bioethanol in batch, packed, fluidized bed bio-reactors. Present study, focused mainly sodium alginate (2% to 6%) as micro-organism support for production of bio-ethanol in all three reactors and find the better reactor and better concentration of sodium alginate for immobilization of yeast.

A Long Journey toward Healing: The King Is Alive

Shakespearean plays have been frequently adapted to films since the movie was invented. King Lear, as one of them, has revealed its malleability into versatile perspectives. This paper concentrates on The King Is Alive, among the numerous film versions of King Lear, as a case study of dramatherapy. In the movie, a group of travellers are thrown into the middle of Kalahari desert due to the broken compass and shortage of gasoline. Facing the fear of death, they start rehearsing Shakespeare’s King Lear, led by Henry, a member of the group. Through rehearsals, they confront inner and outer conflicts that finally lead to healing of their trauma even with some exception of destructive results. The procedure remarkably reflects Sue Jennings’ theory of drama therapy: E(Embodiment), P(Projection), and R(Role Play). As a result, the movie shows us that King Lear, like most other plays by Shakespeare, never fails to provide a wonderful spectrum which reflects a wide variety of human conditions combined with cultural and political implications.

Japan Could Change While Staying the Course

Richard Samuels's book 3.11: Disaster and Change Japan is the best academic book to date on the triple disaster because of both the insightful academic questions it raises and the thoroughness of its earthquake-related information. It also is among the most provocative books I have ever read, posing the crucial question to Japan: Why has the opportunity of this not produced change? While contemplating this important question, however, I wondered whether perhaps it was that Japan did not change that much as a result of the crisis. I learned a lot from reading this book, but sometimes found myself being a bit skeptical of its criticism of Japan's choice to stay the rather than put it gear.1 Perhaps, I wondered, Japan is changing a piecemeal way, and perhaps it was predictable from the beginning that the probability of great change would not be high.To understand what happened, Samuels smartly chose three policy areas: national security, energy policy, and local governance. These not only are the areas that he knows best from his own academic research, but they also are where Japan faced the most important difficulties during 3.11. The damage from 3.11 was unprecedented. According to the World Bank, it represents the largest economic loss from one disaster since 1965.2 In the first week after the incident, people suffered shortages of food, water, and gasoline, among other things. Help and support came from abroad as well as from all over the country, as the largest number of volunteers Japanese history was mobilized. Although he points out some of the positive aspects of the response, Samuels nonetheless is very critical of the early stages of the government's risk management under the Kan cabinet. Two years and some months later, numerous debates are underway about changes various policy areas. However, Japan has still not geared in the course for change.Chapter 2, which is titled Never Waste a Good Crisis, and chapter 3, Historical and Comparative Guidance, were to me the key chapters for understanding this book. Chapter 2 sets the stage for the argument that Japan chose to stay the rather than put it gear. Samuels explains that the first few years after a constitute a critical period during which leaders may enjoy a greater range of choices than usual and which new institutions and structures could emerge (p. 24). The events and experiences of 3.11 were shocks of a magnitude equal to or greater than what had produced changes to the the past. According to Samuels, we should presume that significant adjustments follow sudden, major challenges to a previously stable system (p. 24).In contrast with chapter 2, where Samuels argues for a direction of change, chapter 3 provides very objectively the comparative framework to read the subsequent chapters (with chapter 4 focusing on security, chapter 5 on energy, and chapter 6 on local governance). The book considers a range of historical examples of natural disasters, including Hurricane Katrina the United States 2005; the 2008 earthquake Sichuan, China; Cyclone Nargis Myanmar 2008; and the 1995 earthquake Kobe. These examples may not be exhaustive, but they are deeply researched. Samuels clearly is knowledgeable and must have worked hard to collect and present the information about these disasters a very interesting way. His analysis of the Sichuan earthquake, for example, is a small case study of Japan-China diplomatic relations a difficult time. Although he concludes that the relationship did not ultimately improve from such diplomacy, the case study still suggests how a disaster can function as a diplomatic tool.Drawing on a quote by White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to never waste a crisis (p. 26), Samuels has analyzed 3.11 to see how Japan has made use of its good crisis to recover from the damages. He reviews the past two years since the earthquake each of the three policy areas to assess whether any changes have occurred. …

Comments: The Embargo at 40

Editor's column Forty years ago, the global oil market faced shortages, price shocks, and unanswered questions about security of supply. The global oil landscape is drastically different today, and many of the changes grew out of the events that occurred 4 decades ago. The most dramatic recent change is the growth in US production, revitalized by shale and tight oil output. The United States has drastically reduced its reliance on imported oil and is predicted to soon be the largest producer in the world, surpassing Saudi Arabia and Russia. US oil production has grown more than 50% in the past 5 years, and petroleum imports have fallen from a high of 60% in 2005 to 35% today, according to IHS CERA. That 35% figure is the same as in 1973, when the so-called Arab oil embargo jolted the US and other developed countries into realizing the significance of their dependence on oil supplies from the Middle East and the political and economic ramifications of that reliance. In addition to oil, US natural gas production has risen by a third since 2005, and shale gas now accounts for more than 40% of total gas output. Long thought a reliable future customer of natural gas, the US is now retrofitting import terminals into gas export facilities. The 1973 oil embargo—along with consumer governments’ reactive policies such as price controls—helped create gasoline shortages and political panic. It also spawned the encouragement of technological innovation and the opening of new frontiers for oil exploration and production. Developments in the North Sea, Alaska, deepwater US Gulf of Mexico and west Africa, and Canadian oil sands, as well as the growth of other non-OPEC production followed. Since 1973, OPEC production has remained relatively flat at 30 million BOPD, while non-OPEC production has doubled from 27 million BOPD. The crisis also led to increased consumption efficiency and research into alternative forms of energy. After the oil crisis, the leading consuming countries created the International Energy Agency to help guide the need to increase energy security and developed initiatives, such as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to guard against shortages and potential price spikes. While OPEC members and national oil companies (NOCs) have lost market share since that time, they still own the vast majority of the world’s reserves and are much less beholden to private international oil companies (IOCs). NOCs have become much more technically and financially savvy, calling the shots inside their countries and competing head to head outside their countries. NOCs no longer have to rely on large operators to develop their resources. They have the ability to manage projects and apply the latest technology, or can seek help from the large service companies, which are increasingly offering one-stop shop project expertise.