Oil Crisis
The 1973 oil crisis began on October 15, 1973, when the members of Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC, consisting of the Arab members of OPEC plus Egypt and Syria) announced an oil embargo as a result of the ongoing Yom Kippur War.
OAPEC declared it would no longer ship oil to the United States, its allies in Western Europe, and Japan because they had supported Israel in its conflict with Syria, Egypt and Iraq.
At the same time, OPEC members agreed to use their leverage over the world price-setting mechanism for oil in order to raise world oil prices, after the failure of negotiations with the “Seven Sisters” earlier in the month.
For the most part, industrialized economies relied on crude oil and OPEC was their predominant supplier. Because of the dramatic inflation experienced during this period, a popular economic theory has been that these price increases were to blame, as being suppressive of economic activity. However, the causality stated by this theory is often questioned.
The targeted countries responded with a wide variety of new, and mostly permanent, initiatives to contain their further dependency. The 1973 “oil price shock”, along with the 1973–1974 stock market crash, have been regarded as the first event since the Great Depression to have a persistent economic effect.
For more info see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1973_oil_crisis
