1973 Arab oil embargo; Oil embargo supply chain disruption

What I've learned over my career is it takes about five years. I remember in 1973 there was the first Arab oil embargo, and I remember sitting in the gas lines. People would sit for two hours to be able to purchase a tank of gas, you couldn't drive your car without gas. Saudi Arabian and other Middle Eastern countries basically said we're not going to sell you oil. The government started creating a Strategic Petroleum Reserve, companies like utilities that were burning oil to generate electricity decided they were going to be able to use two different energy sources, they'd be able to flip a switch and go from oil to gas to coal or vice versa. So in 1978, five years later, when the Arabs tried the same thing, it was much less effective. People had learned their lesson not to put all your eggs in one basket — the oil basket — and they diversified their energy portfolio. It takes five to ten years to recover from a supply disruption, and China no longer has that stranglehold on rare-earth materials.

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