Economics Timeline Flashcards
John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust, which controlled virtually the entire U.S. oil industry, is broken into pieces by the U.S. Supreme Court, which found it guilty of monopolizing the industry through anti-competitive practices
1911
One of the first commercially viable oil wells is drilled in the south of Titusville, Pennsylvania, by Colonel Edwin Drake, an event commonly cited as the start of the oil age
1859
The British fleet begins switching from coal to oil-fired naval vessels under Winston Churchill, giving it a sea advantage; along with the invention of the plane and the tank, this move cemented oil’s role in national security
1915
A secret agreement is made at Achnacarry, Scotland, between the U.S., British, and Dutch oil firms, including Standard of New Jersey, creating a global cartel
1928
An effort led by Interior Secretary Harold Ickes to purchase part of the Saudi Arabia oil fields on behalf of a newly established U.S. national oil company is repelled by the owners of the concession, Texaco and Standard Oil of California (Chevron)
1944
The first nuclear reactor to supply electricity to a grid comes online in Obninsk, USSR (now Russia)
1954
Natural Gas (26%) overtakes coal (23%) for the first times in terms of their relative shares of U.S. primary energy, both behind oil (45%), in 1948, coal (38%) and oil (37%) had been virtually tied and gas (16%) had been a distant third
1958
U.S. domestic production of oil reaches its peak and begins to decline
1970
OPEC, led by Iran and Saudi Arabia, strong US allies at the time, more than quadruples the posted price of oil
1973-74
Oil prices collapse nearly overnight as Saudi Arabia “opens the tape”, bringing a great deal of spare capacity into production. Oil prices will remain low until the early 2000s
1985
Rolling blackouts plague the deregulated electricity markets in California; Enron, a company that made billions of dollars from the crisis, goes bankrupt in October. Estimates of the total cost of the crisis range from 20-45 billion dollars
2000-01
Oil prices reach all time high in July; the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression begins in September
2008
China’s coal production doubles in less than a decade: 2002 - 1.7 billion short tons; 2010 - 3.5 billion short tons
2010
The Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan suffers meltdowns at three of its four reactors after an offshore earthquake and resultant tsunami damage of the plant
2011
Additional supply from hydraulic fracturing and record setting winter warmth in the U.S. briefly drives domestic natural gas prices below $2 per million BTUs, down from a high of $12.69/BTU in June 2008
2012
