The first shortage was caused by the oil embargo when the (mostly Arab) oil-exporting countries held back production to choke us. It was at least a few years before we got over that severe shortage. That was during Nixon's 2nd term.
The embargo necessitated the odd-even rationing. There were long lines at the gas stations, people waiting in line for hours to top off their tanks. Many independent gas stations went out of business because they didn't have a way to refill their pumps. We had odd-even days. If your license plate ended in zero-2-4-6-8 you could only purchase gas on "even" days of the month. If your license plate ended in an odd number (1-3-5-7-9) then you could only purchase gas on "odd" days of the month. (They had a rule about license plates with no numbers also.)
The 2nd crisis happened in 1979 when Iran took 66 hostages from the American embassy in Tehran. Immediately Carter stopped all imports of oil from Iran, and it created severe oil/gas shortages for a year, but I don't think we had the odd-even rationing then. Can anyone remember? There were long lines at the gas stations again, but the odd-even plan didn't seem to make much difference so they didn't do it a 2nd time.
My point is that things were WAY WORSE in the 1970s than they are now. We have more options (such as fuel efficient cars) and we aren't as dependent on a small number of suppliers like we were then.
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