26 Years Ago In Time

When Americans faced a previous spurt in oil prices in 1979, the villains of the moment were the BIG OIL companies, as TIME noted in a cover story.

For the second time in a decade, energy scare stories have become the stuff of headlines: motorists who confront the prospect of a summer of gasoline shortages at $1 per gal.; homeowners who have visions of dollar bills fluttering up the chimney every time the oil burner in the basement trips on. Angry and resentful, people are blaming the one institution that not only grows richer every time there is an oil squeeze, but is as close at hand as the nearest service station: the $360 billion-a-year U.S. oil industry ... All around the U.S., the lament is the same: in ways both devious and sinister, and too mystifying to understand, Big Oil is somehow out to rip off the public. Says Irene McMackin, a Milwaukee public relations consultant: "I just don't feel the crisis is real. I don't trust the oil companies." Even a high-ranking General Motors executive in Detroit remarks: "The whole thing smells funny to me." --TIME, May 7, 1979

Read the entire article at time.com/years