Crude Oil Above $100 in US 2026 | 25 Years Above $100, By President & Facts

Crude oil has closed above $100 a barrel on roughly 415 trading days across the last four US presidential terms since 2009, with Barack Obama’s two terms accounting for the largest share at 308 days, followed by Joe Biden’s 83, Donald Trump’s second term’s 24 (and counting), and Trump’s first term at zero. Oil first closed above $100 on February 19, 2008, and hit its all-time high of $147.27 a barrel on July 11, 2008.

Crude Oil Above $100 in America

Crude oil above $100 a barrel has returned to American headlines in 2026 after the longest stretch below that mark since the shale boom took hold in the mid-2010s. West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the main US benchmark, has closed above $100 on multiple occasions this September alone, driven by the 2026 Iran war, a Houthi drone strike that forced Saudi Arabia to shut its East-West pipeline, and renewed attacks on tankers moving through the Strait of Hormuz. That volatility has revived a specific piece of political arithmetic: how many actual trading days has crude oil spent above $100 under each of the last four US presidents.

This report walks through that count in detail, the historical run of $100 oil going back to its first close above that level in February 2008, and what has driven the 2026 spike specifically. It also places the current numbers in the context of 25 years of oil-price history, from the pre-2008 climb through the shale-driven crash of 2014-2015 to this year’s renewed Middle East disruption. Every figure below is sourced to the US Energy Information Administration’s daily spot price records or to named market analysis built directly from that data, not to an independent estimate.

The days-above-$100 comparison has circulated widely across political and financial commentary in recent weeks, often stripped of the methodology behind it. This report reconstructs that methodology explicitly: which benchmark was used, how a “day” is counted, and where the underlying EIA data can be independently verified, so the numbers below can be checked rather than simply repeated.

Interesting Facts About Crude Oil Above $100 in 2026

DAYS WTI CLOSED ABOVE $100, BY PRESIDENTIAL TERM
Obama (2009-2017)        ███████████████████████████████ 308 days
Trump 1st (2017-2021)      0 days
Biden (2021-2025)        ████████  83 days
Trump 2nd (2025-present) ██  24 days

Source: US Energy Information Administration daily spot price series (WTI, Cushing, Oklahoma); Vista Market Research; compiled political and market analysis of EIA data, September 2026.

The 308 days recorded during Barack Obama’s two terms reflects the sustained 2011 to 2014 run of triple-digit oil, driven by the Arab Spring’s disruption of Libyan supply and tightened Iran sanctions, a period that alone accounts for most of that total. Donald Trump’s first term, by contrast, coincided almost entirely with the shale-production glut and then the pandemic demand collapse, producing zero days above $100, the only presidential term since the benchmark first crossed triple digits in 2008 to record none.

Joe Biden’s 83 days cluster tightly around March to June 2022, when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine pushed Brent crude, WTI’s international counterpart, as high as $139 a barrel. Trump’s second term has already logged 24 days above $100 through mid-September 2026 alone, entirely a product of the 2026 Iran war and its knock-on effects on Gulf shipping routes, a total that is still climbing as this report is published.

The 2026 Iran War and the Return of $100 Oil

2026 OIL-PRICE SHOCKS FROM THE IRAN WAR TIMELINE
Mar 2026: South Pars attack           WTI ~$74 → Brent $103→$108
Jul 2026: renewed US-Iran strikes     Brent → $76.48 (2-wk high)
Sep 10, 2026: pipeline drone strike   WTI/Brent surge, Hormuz fears
Sep 2026 peak                         Brent above $108

Source: CNBC; Al Jazeera; The National; Wikipedia — 2026 Iran War Fuel Crisis.

The 2026 Iran war has produced a series of escalating price shocks rather than one single spike, beginning with the March 18 Israeli strike on Iran’s South Pars gas field and the Asaluyeh oil refinery, which pushed prices from $103 to $108 a barrel within hours. A ceasefire briefly cooled the market before renewed US-Iran strikes on July 8 revoked a temporary sanctions waiver on Iranian oil, sending Brent back above $76.

The sharpest escalation came in September 2026, when drone strikes damaged Saudi Arabia’s East-West Crude Oil Pipeline, the 7-million-barrel-per-day artery that lets Saudi crude bypass the Strait of Hormuz entirely. Its closure, combined with renewed Houthi attacks and reports of a second undisclosed Iranian strike on US Navy vessels, pushed oil above $108 a barrel in mid-September before US-Iran peace talks in New York began easing the supply-risk premium by month’s end, leaving the Brent-WTI spread at its widest level since May, $12.68, partly on fears of a potential US diesel-export ban.

WTI Crude Oil Annual Price History: 25 Years of Data

WTI ANNUAL AVERAGE PRICE, SELECTED YEARS ($/barrel)
2008  ████████████████████ $99.75 (high $145.29)
2011  ███████████████████ $95.11 (high $113.93)
2013  ████████████████████ $98.05 (high $110.53)
2020  ████████  $39.34 (low -$37.63)
2022  ███████████████████ $94.33 (high $123.70)
2026  █████████████████ $83.60 YTD (high $112.95)

Source: US Energy Information Administration; WTI daily closing price archives.

The 25-year span from 2000 to 2026 shows oil moving through four distinct triple-digit eras: the 2008 spike that peaked just before the financial crisis, the sustained 2011–2014 run tied to the Arab Spring and Iran sanctions, the brief 2022 surge following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the ongoing 2026 disruption from the Iran war. Between those episodes, prices spent extended stretches well below $100, most notably the 2015–2020 period when US shale production kept a lid on prices and 2020’s pandemic collapse briefly sent WTI negative for the first time in history.

2026’s year-to-date average of $83.60 sits below every prior triple-digit year on this list, even though the year’s $112.95 high shows prices did cross $100 repeatedly during the year’s geopolitical shocks. That gap between the average and the high is itself telling: unlike 2008’s sustained 194-day run above $100, the 2026 spikes have so far been shorter, sharper events tied to specific attacks and diplomatic developments rather than one continuous triple-digit stretch, a pattern more in line with several of the shorter “runs” counted among the 33 recorded since 2008.

Days Above $100 by President: The Full Breakdown for 2026

CUMULATIVE DAYS ABOVE $100 BY TERM (each block = 20 days)
Obama       ███████████████ 308
Trump 1st     0
Biden       ████  83
Trump 2nd   █  24 (still rising)

Source: EIA daily WTI spot price data; independent analysis published by G-PA/@IndianaGPA, September 2026, methodology stated as “days counted when the price was strictly greater than $100 per barrel,” data through September 15, 2026.

Reading this table by term length matters as much as reading the raw day count. Obama’s 308 days were spread across eight years, or roughly 1,961 total trading days, meaning triple-digit oil defined only about 16% of his presidency in nominal terms. Biden’s 83 days, concentrated almost entirely in a single four-month window in 2022, represented a much sharper, shorter shock rather than a sustained condition.

Trump’s second term has already accumulated 24 days above $100 in barely eight months in office, a pace that, if it continued, would outstrip Biden’s four-year total well before the term’s end, though the underlying driver, an active shooting war disrupting Gulf shipping lanes, is a fundamentally different kind of shock than Biden’s Ukraine-driven spike or Obama’s Arab Spring-era run. For a fuller picture of where today’s prices sit against recent history, the broader global oil price figures tracked separately break out the Brent-WTI relationship and forecast ranges in more detail.

It’s also worth noting what this table does not capture: intraday highs. A trading day can touch above $100 and still close below it, meaning WTI has likely traded above triple digits, even briefly, on additional days beyond the 415 closes tallied across all four terms combined. The strictly-greater-than-$100-at-close standard used here is deliberately conservative, chosen because closing prices are the figure most commonly reported and most resistant to the kind of single-tick volatility that can otherwise inflate a day count.

Inflation-Adjusted Oil Prices: The Real-Dollar Comparison in 2026

REAL VS NOMINAL: SHARE OF TERM SPENT ABOVE $100-EQUIVALENT
Obama, nominal $100 threshold     ███████████████ ~16% of term
Obama, 2026-dollar equivalent     ██████████████████████████████████ 68% of term (1,331/1,961 days)

Source: Doug Casey’s Crisis Investing analysis, “Which President Gave Us the Highest Petroleum Prices?,” September 21, 2026, using CPI-U adjustment.

Nominal-dollar counts like the 308/0/83/24 breakdown tell only part of the story, because a dollar in 2009 bought considerably more than a dollar does in 2026. Adjusted for inflation using the CPI-U, the picture shifts substantially: West Texas crude traded above the 2026-dollar equivalent of $100 on 1,331 of the 1,961 trading days across Obama’s two terms, or 68% of his entire presidency, more than four times the nominal-dollar count.

That inflation adjustment also reframes Trump’s first term, whose famously low nominal gas prices, averaging $2.48 a gallon, still worked out to above the 2026-dollar equivalent of $3 for 77% of the term once converted to current currency. The lesson from both figures together is the same one economists routinely apply to any multi-decade price comparison: nominal dollar figures, the kind circulating in most political comparisons, systematically understate how expensive earlier energy price spikes actually were once currency debasement is factored in.

Brent vs. WTI: Why the Benchmark You Use Changes the Count

BRENT-WTI SPREAD DURING KEY 2026 EVENTS
May 2026 spread         █████████████ $13
Sept 25, 2026 spread    ████████████ $12.68

Source: The National; Reuters; Investing.com daily futures data.

Political comparisons of “days above $100” rarely specify which benchmark they’re using, and the choice matters: Brent crude, which prices roughly two-thirds of the world’s oil, has spent more time above $100 in 2026 than WTI, the US domestic benchmark most commonly used in American political commentary. As of September 25, 2026, Brent sat at $105.30 while WTI traded at $93.98, a $12.68 gap that widened partly on reports of a potential US ban on diesel exports.

That spread has fluctuated sharply through 2026’s crisis, and it explains why some viral figures citing Brent data show more recent days above $100 than figures built strictly from WTI closes. The 308/0/83/24 figures cited earlier in this report are built specifically from WTI closing prices, the benchmark most US-focused political and economic commentary defaults to, since WTI more directly reflects what American refiners and, ultimately, drivers pay. For the fuel-price side of this same story, the year-by-year US gas price data tracked separately shows how these crude-oil swings have translated into pump prices across the same presidential terms.

Global Supply Chokepoints Driving the 2026 Price Surge

SHARE OF GLOBAL OIL/LNG TRANSITING KEY CHOKEPOINTS
Strait of Hormuz (oil)         ████████████████████ ~20%
Strait of Hormuz (LNG)         ████████████████████ ~20%
East-West pipeline capacity    ███████  7M bpd (bypass route)

Source: Al Jazeera; Wikipedia — 2026 Strait of Hormuz Crisis; gulfnews.com.

Nearly 20% of the world’s crude oil and a similar share of liquefied natural gas normally passes through the Strait of Hormuz, making any disruption there disproportionately impactful on global prices regardless of actual production levels. Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, capable of carrying 7 million barrels per day around the strait entirely, has functioned as the market’s primary safety valve during the 2026 Iran war, a role Saudi Aramco’s own CEO has described as more stabilizing than the coordinated release of strategic reserves led by the United States.

When drone strikes forced that pipeline’s closure on September 10, 2026, the market lost its main workaround at the same time shipping through Hormuz itself remained hazardous, a combination that pushed prices toward their September peak faster than either disruption would have alone. Iran’s own energy infrastructure has taken direct damage as well, and the oil export statistics from Iran’s Kharg Island terminal provide additional detail on how much of the country’s own crude-export capacity has been affected by the broader conflict.

What Higher Crude Oil Means for American Drivers in 2026

US RETAIL GASOLINE, SELECTED 2026 SNAPSHOTS ($/gallon)
Feb 9, 2026    ███████████████ $2.902
Mid-Sept 2026  ████████████████████ approaching $4.00

Source: EIA; Reuters; theworlddata.com Gas Prices by Year Statistics.

Crude oil is the single largest component of what drivers pay at the pump, and the 2026 Iran war’s price shocks have shown up directly in retail gasoline figures: the national average sat at just $2.902 a gallon in early February 2026, before geopolitical tensions pushed prices up more than 30% in a single month by mid-March, approaching $4 a gallon in some regions. That swing illustrates how quickly a crude-oil shock this large can move from the futures market into a household budget.

Record US crude production, averaging 13.2 million barrels per day in 2025, has provided some cushion against these shocks that wasn’t available during the 2008 or 2011-2014 spikes, when the US imported a much larger share of its oil. Even so, because WTI and Brent both trade on a global market, domestic production increases have not been enough to fully insulate American drivers from a war-driven supply shock originating half a world away in the Persian Gulf.

That global pricing dynamic is precisely why the days-above-$100 figures at the center of this report resist a simple political explanation in either direction. Supply and demand shocks originating in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, or the North American shale patch have historically mattered far more to where crude oil trades than any single administration’s domestic energy policy, a pattern that has held consistently across all four of the terms counted in this report’s central table.

Crude Oil Above $100 FAQs

How many days has crude oil been above $100 under each president?

Obama: 308 days. Trump’s first term: 0 days. Biden: 83 days. Trump’s second term: 24 days and rising, through mid-September 2026, based on WTI closing prices strictly above $100.

When did oil first close above $100 a barrel?

February 19, 2008, when WTI closed at $100.01.

What is the highest price oil has ever reached?

$147.27 a barrel intraday, on July 11, 2008; the highest weekly close was $145.29 on July 3, 2008.

Why is oil above $100 again in 2026?

The 2026 Iran war, including the September drone strike that shut Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline and renewed attacks near the Strait of Hormuz, has driven repeated price spikes.

Is Brent or WTI used to count “days above $100”?

Most US political comparisons use WTI, the domestic benchmark. Brent, which prices about two-thirds of world oil, has spent more days above $100 in 2026 than WTI.

Did oil ever go negative?

Yes. On April 20, 2020, WTI briefly traded at -$37.63 a barrel during a pandemic-driven storage crisis.

How long do oil price spikes above $100 typically last?

Since 2008, there have been 33 separate runs above $100, averaging 21 days each; the longest ran 194 days in 2008.

How does inflation change the “days above $100” comparison?

Adjusted to 2026 dollars, Obama-era oil traded above the inflation-adjusted equivalent of $100 on 68% of his term’s trading days, far more than the nominal 16% figure suggests.

What shut down the Saudi East-West pipeline in 2026?

A drone strike on September 10, 2026 damaged the pipeline, forcing Saudi Arabia to close the 7-million-barrel-per-day route that bypasses the Strait of Hormuz.

How much of world oil trade passes through the Strait of Hormuz?

Roughly 20% of global crude oil and about 20% of global LNG shipments transit the strait.

What was oil’s average price so far in 2026?

$83.60 per barrel year-to-date for WTI, ranging between a low of $55.99 and a high of $112.95.

Disclaimer: This research report is compiled from publicly available sources. While reasonable efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, no representation or warranty, express or implied, is given as to the completeness or reliability of the information. We accept no liability for any errors, omissions, losses, or damages of any kind arising from the use of this report.

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