People being unable to get to work, trucks being unable to deliver food to stores because gas is unavailable. (I don't foresee any scenario where we get to that point, but if it happened it would be a crisis.)
A 50% price increase would be bad for people who have to drive and are in a financially precarious situation, but it's not any more a catastrophe than all the other various things that affect people in financially precarious situations, which upper-middle-class people can shrug off as a mild annoyance.
Thanks for the reference, albeit paywalled - was the disparition of gas lines an immediate consequence of the order, or did it just potentially prevent future gas lines ?
I'm surprised it isn't talked about more. During the gas allocation times, there'd be a glut of gas in Florida and long lines in California because the DoE would allocate gas based on the previous year's usage patterns. Things change constantly, and the DoE was unable to adapt.
I had a friend who bought a gas station. It took him months to get a gas allocation from the DoE because the gas station across the street challenged his allocation, for obvious reasons.
When the market decides where to put the gas, the tanker trucks take gas from the glutted areas and move it to the shortage areas as a natural action. Any reasonable business moves product to where it is selling.
A 50% price increase would be bad for people who have to drive and are in a financially precarious situation, but it's not any more a catastrophe than all the other various things that affect people in financially precarious situations, which upper-middle-class people can shrug off as a mild annoyance.