The Netherlands have abandoned gasoline rationing. Recently Rotterdam was so jammed with tankers that some had to be sent to Antwerp in Belgium to unload.

While gasoline lines are growing longer and local rationing plans are proliferating in the U.S., fears of a disastrous scarcity of oil are fading rapidly in most of the rest of the world. To many Americans, that contrast must suggest the suspicion that the energy crisis is something that is…