Gas Price Record Statistics in US 2026 | War, Supply & Facts

Gas Prices in America 2026

The price an American driver pays at the pump on any given day is not a single decision made by any single entity — it is the compressed output of an interlocking global system involving crude oil markets, international conflict, refinery operations, pipeline infrastructure, government taxes, seasonal demand cycles, and local competition. In the United States, regular unleaded gasoline is the most widely sold and tracked fuel grade, measured in dollars per gallon, and monitored in near-real time by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), the American Automobile Association (AAA), and third-party aggregators like GasBuddy and OPIS. The single largest component of the pump price is crude oil, which historically has accounted for 47%–51% of the retail price of a gallon of regular gasoline. Taxes, both federal and state, account for approximately 17%, while refining, distribution, marketing, and retail operations make up the remaining 36%. Because crude oil is priced in a global market, events thousands of miles away — a war, an embargo, a hurricane damaging Gulf Coast refineries, a geopolitical realignment in OPEC — translate almost instantly into price changes at the neighborhood gas station.

In 2026, the United States is experiencing one of the most dramatic gasoline price disruptions in its history, driven by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz following the outbreak of the US-Israel war on Iran in late February. The strait, through which approximately 20% of the world’s oil supply normally passes, has been effectively shut down since the war began, triggering what the International Energy Agency (IEA) characterized as the “largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market.” Gasoline prices in the US that averaged just $2.81 per gallon in January 2026 — the third consecutive year of price declines — surged past $4.50 per gallon nationally by early May 2026, rising more than 50% since the war began on February 28. Understanding the full context of this spike requires grounding it in the historical record of US gas prices, the structural factors that make American pump prices what they are, and the policy levers being deployed to try to contain the damage as the situation continues to evolve.

Interesting US Gas Price Facts 2026 — At a Glance

US Gas Price Key Facts Dashboard — May 2026
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  ⛽ $4.52/gal   National average (May 7, 2026 — AAA)
  📈 +50%        Price surge since Iran war began (Feb 28, 2026)
  🏆 $5.02/gal   All-time US national average record (June 14, 2022)
  📉 $2.81/gal   US average in late December 2025 (3-yr declining trend)
  💰 $2.98/gal   US average 2 days BEFORE the Iran war (Feb 26, 2026)
  🚀 $6.17/gal   Highest state average in 2026: California (May 7, 2026)
  🏷️  $3.99/gal   Lowest state average in 2026: Oklahoma (May 7, 2026)
  🛢️  $114/bbl    Brent crude peak in 2026 (May 5, 2026)
  🌊 20%         World oil supply normally transiting Strait of Hormuz
  📦 17.5M bbl   SPR released Mar 20–Apr 24 to curb price spike (EIA)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Data Sources: AAA State Gas Price Averages (daily, May 2026); EIA Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update; NPR — Gas Prices Up 30+ Cents a Gallon Last Week (May 3, 2026)

The facts above tell a story that is as dramatic as any chapter in US energy history. In the space of roughly ten weeks — from February 26 to May 7, 2026 — the national average price of a gallon of regular gasoline surged from $2.98 to $4.52, a gain of more than $1.54 per gallon driven entirely by a single geopolitical event: the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz following the US-Israel military strikes on Iran. The +21.2% monthly gasoline CPI increase in March 2026 was the single largest in the history of the Consumer Price Index series dating back to 1967 — exceeding even the oil shock surges of the 1970s on a month-to-month basis. For American consumers, the average monthly gasoline spending reached $198.50 per month as of March 2026, at roughly $45.70 per fill-up transaction, according to Empower Personal Dashboard data. And critically, the war’s ceasefire in April did not bring prices back down — as S&P Global Energy analyst Rob Smith noted, even a true and lasting resolution would still take “months to get back to what it was pre-war, if not even longer,” because a structural risk premium will attach to Hormuz transit for years after hostilities end.

The data also contextualizes the 2026 spike within the broader historical record. The current national average of $4.52 per gallon as of May 7 is now meaningfully higher than the $4.11 record that stood from 2008 to 2022, places it among the top 10 most expensive national weekly averages since EIA records began, and sits fewer than 50 cents below the all-time national record of $5.02 set on June 14, 2022, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The March 2026 monthly average of $3.64 was itself already notable — the last time monthly prices were higher was September 2023 at $3.84. What makes 2026 historically unusual compared to 2022 is the speed of the ascent: the 2022 record was the product of a months-long oil market realignment; the 2026 spike occurred in weeks.

US Gas Price History 2026 | Year-by-Year Annual Averages

US Annual Average Gas Price (Regular Unleaded) — 1971 to 2026
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  Year   Avg $/gal    Context
  ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  1971   $0.36        Pre-OPEC era low
  1981   $1.38        Post-Iran Revolution / 2nd oil crisis peak
  1998   $1.03        Asian financial crisis demand collapse
  2000   $1.48        Pre-9/11 era pricing
  2004   $1.88        Rising demand, Iraq war
  2008   $3.27 ▲      Record $4.11/gal peak (July) — global demand surge
  2009   $2.35        Financial crisis demand collapse
  2012   $3.64 ▲      Highest inflation-adjusted average year ever
  2014   $3.37        Last year of $3+ before crude collapse
  2016   $2.14        OPEC price war / shale oversupply
  2020   $2.17        COVID-19 demand crash; $1.84/gal weekly low
  2021   $3.01        Recovery / supply lag
  2022   $3.96 ▲      Russia/Ukraine; $5.02 peak (June 14) ALL-TIME HIGH
  2023   $3.53        Declining from 2022 peak
  2024   $3.31        2nd consecutive annual decline
  2025   $3.10        3rd consecutive annual decline (-$0.21 vs 2024)
  2026   $3.70+ ▲▲    Iran war spike; >$4.50 by May 7, 2026

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Data Sources: EIA — “In 2025, US Retail Gasoline Prices Decreased for Third Consecutive Year” (January 7, 2026); EIA Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update (weekly); LendingTree / AAA data (April 2026); AAA / Finder.com (May 7, 2026); CNN — “US Gas Prices Shot Up $1.48 a Gallon, or 42%, to Record $5.02” (February 2023); GOBankingRates — “What Was the Highest Gas Price in US History?”; WalletHub — Gas Prices Over Time 2026

The annual average history of US gasoline prices is a compressed autobiography of American economic and geopolitical history. The three periods of dramatic price escalation — 2007–2008, 2011–2014, and 2021–2022 — each have distinct causes but a common mechanism: a mismatch between global oil supply and demand that forced crude prices higher, which rippled directly into the pump price. The $4.11 record of July 2008 occurred against a backdrop of booming Chinese and Indian industrial demand pushing crude to $147 per barrel, combined with thin global spare production capacity. That record stood for 14 years until Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 broke it within days, ultimately driving the national average to the all-time high of $5.02 on June 14, 2022 — a level that then fell continuously for 98 straight days.

The three consecutive years of declining prices from 2022 through 2025 — with the 2025 annual average of $3.10/gal representing the lowest in nominal terms since 2021 — created a consumer and policymaker expectation of continued moderation heading into 2026. The EIA’s pre-war Short-Term Energy Outlook had projected further declines, with Brent crude forecast to average $58/barrel and retail gasoline expected to decrease by approximately $0.20/gallon in 2026 compared to 2025. That forecast was written before February 28. The Iran war reversed three years of declining prices in under ten weeks, delivering a price shock whose speed — the +21.2% monthly CPI increase in March 2026 — was, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ own reckoning, the largest since the series began in 1967, eclipsing even the jumps recorded during the 1973 Arab oil embargo.

US Gas Price by State 2026 | Highest, Lowest & Regional Breakdown

US Gas Price by State — Regional Tiers (May 2026, AAA)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  MOST EXPENSIVE (West Coast + Islands):
  California    $6.17  ████████████████████████████████████████
  Washington    $5.76  ███████████████████████████████████████
  Hawaii        $5.66  ███████████████████████████████████████
  Oregon        $5.39  ██████████████████████████████████████
  Nevada        $4.94  █████████████████████████████████████

  MID-RANGE (Northeast & Midwest):
  New York      ~$4.70  ████████████████████████████████████
  Pennsylvania  ~$4.60  ████████████████████████████████████
  Ohio/Michigan ~$4.55  ███████████████████████████████████

  CHEAPEST (South & Central):
  Oklahoma      $3.99  █████████████████████████████████
  Mississippi   $4.01  █████████████████████████████████
  Louisiana     $4.02  █████████████████████████████████
  Texas         ~$4.10  █████████████████████████████████

  Price spread (CA vs OK): $2.18/gal — largest gap in years

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Data Sources: AAA State Gas Price Averages (May 7, 2026) via Finder.com; SmartAsset — Gas Prices Hit Records in 2026: State by State Breakdown (April 1, 2026); LendingTree / AAA data (April 15, 2026); Empower / AAA (April 20, 2026); EIA — Factors Affecting Gasoline Prices (updated January 2026); TheWorldData.com — Gas Prices by Year Statistics in US 2026 (February 2026); Statranker.org — US States by Gasoline Prices 2026 (May 3, 2026)

The state-level gas price map of May 2026 reveals a country where drivers in the same week, filling identical tanks with identical fuel, pay $2.18 more per gallon if they live in California versus Oklahoma — a gap that translates to nearly $33 per fill-up on a 15-gallon tank, and over $1,700 per year for a once-a-week driver. This is not a temporary war-induced anomaly; it is a structural feature of the American gasoline market that the Iran war has amplified but not created. California’s price premium rests on three reinforcing pillars that no other state combines to the same degree: the highest state gasoline excise tax in the nation at 68.1 cents per gallon, mandatory use of California-specific reformulated gasoline (CARB-spec) that cannot be substituted with fuel produced for other states, and near-total dependence on a shrinking cluster of in-state refineries with no practical pipeline connection to Gulf Coast supply. When one California refinery goes down for maintenance, the regional supply shock has nowhere to be absorbed from outside the PADD 5 region.

The Southern and Central states’ pricing advantage is equally structural: Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oklahoma sit at the doorstep of more than 45% of total US refining capacity, pay some of the nation’s lowest state gasoline taxes, and operate under no special fuel-blend requirements. What makes the 2026 pattern nationally notable is that every single state experienced double-digit year-over-year gasoline price increases between April 2025 and April 2026 — the breadth of the increase is total, even as the magnitude varies. The states where increases were most severe — Kentucky at +42.5%, Tennessee at +42.2%, and Arizona and Florida at +37% — are not structurally exposed to Hormuz disruption more than other states; they tend to be mid-market states where pre-war prices were already low, making the percentage jump from a lower base appear more dramatic in proportional terms.

2026 Iran War & Strait of Hormuz | The Supply Shock Behind the Spike

Strait of Hormuz Closure Impact — Timeline & Oil Market Data 2026
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  Feb 28, 2026:  US-Israel launch military operations on Iran
                 Strait of Hormuz effectively closed
                 Brent crude: ~$80–82/barrel (+10–13% in days)

  Mar 2026:      US gas prices begin surging
                 Gas: +21.2% monthly CPI — largest jump since 1967
                 Brent rises toward $100+/barrel

  Mar 11, 2026:  US announces SPR crude oil release plan

  Mar 20–Apr 24: 17.5 million barrels released from SPR (EIA data)

  Apr 8, 2026:   US-Iran ceasefire announced
                 Gas prices fall for ~2 weeks on optimism

  Apr 2026:      Ceasefire holds but Hormuz remains severely constrained
                 Prices resume rising; optimism fades

  May 4, 2026:   Gasoline futures hit near-4-year high of $3.74/gal
                 Brent crude: $114.44/barrel (May 5 closing high)
                 WTI crude: $106.42/barrel

  May 5–7, 2026: Violence flares in Hormuz; "Project Freedom" stalled
                 2,000 vessels stranded; 20,000 seafarers trapped
                 National gas average: $4.52/gal (May 7)
                 California: $6.17/gal

  Analyst forecast if Hormuz stays closed through June:
                 US gas could reach $5.00/gal (Lipow Oil Associates)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Data Sources: Wikipedia — 2026 Iran War Fuel Crisis (updated May 7, 2026); NPR — Gas Prices Up 30+ Cents in One Week (May 3, 2026); Al Jazeera — Gasoline in the US Costs 50% More Now Than Before Iran War (May 6, 2026); PBS NewsHour — US Gasoline Prices Rise 50% Since the Start of the Iran War (May 6, 2026); NBC News — Oil Plunges on US-Iran Near-Deal Report (May 7, 2026); CNN Business — Oil Pulls Back After Hitting 2026 High (May 5, 2026); Al Jazeera — Oil Prices Surge as Violence Flares in Strait of Hormuz (May 5, 2026); EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook April 2026

The Strait of Hormuz is a geographic chokepoint only 21 miles wide at its narrowest navigable channel, yet it functions as the single most consequential artery in the global oil system. In a normal operating year, more than 20 million barrels per day of crude oil, refined petroleum products, and liquefied natural gas transit the strait — representing approximately 20% of total global oil consumption and 17% of globally traded LNG. When the strait is closed, there is no practical alternative route for Persian Gulf producers: the Trans-Arabian Pipeline to the Red Sea has limited capacity and is itself in contested territory; the Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline to Fujairah has capacity for about 1.5 million barrels/day — a fraction of what normally flows through Hormuz. The consequence of the February 28 closure was therefore immediate and structurally severe: approximately 10–12 million barrels/day of crude that would normally reach global markets was suddenly stranded or rerouted at enormous cost and delay.

The IEA’s designation of the 2026 Hormuz closure as the “largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market” is technically precise. Previous disruptions — the 1973 Arab oil embargo, the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the 2022 Russia sanctions — each removed significant but partial volumes from global supply. The Hormuz closure affects not a single country’s exports but the aggregated exports of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Iraq, and Iran simultaneously. The ceasefire of April 8, 2026 did not reopen the strait to commercial shipping in any meaningful way: as Rob Smith of S&P Global Energy explained, even after a genuine resolution, the risk premium on Hormuz transit will persist for months in shipping insurance rates, tanker routing decisions, and the time required to clear the backlog of roughly 2,000 stranded vessels. The US government’s SPR release of 17.5 million barrels and Jones Act waiver were containment measures that bought marginal time but could not substitute for the volume normally flowing through the strait.

Gas Price Components 2026 | What You’re Actually Paying For

Breakdown of a Gallon of Regular Gas — 2025 EIA Data
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  On a $3.10/gal national avg (2025 annual average):

  Crude Oil:         47%  ████████████████████████░░░░░░░░  ~$1.46/gal
  Distribution &
  Marketing &
  Retail:            36%  ██████████████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░  ~$1.12/gal
  Taxes:             17%  ████████░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░  ~$0.53/gal
  ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Total:            100%                                    ~$3.10/gal

  At $4.52/gal (May 7, 2026 — Iran war spike):
  Crude oil component at 47%: ~$2.12/gal (reflecting ~$106–114/bbl)
  Tax component (fixed cents per gal): same absolute $, lower %
  Distribution / retail margin: higher due to supply tightness

  Federal gas tax: 18.40 cents/gal (fixed, not % of price)
  Average state tax (Jan 2026): 33.55 cents/gal
  California state excise: 68.10 cents/gal (highest in US)
  Mississippi state excise: 18.40 cents/gal (among lowest)

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Data Sources: EIA — Factors Affecting Gasoline Prices (January 2026); EIA — US Retail Gasoline Prices Decreased for Third Consecutive Year (January 7, 2026); PBS NewsHour — US Gasoline Prices Rise 50% Since Start of Iran War (May 2026); XMap.ai — Fuel Price Dynamics Across Gas Station Brands (2025); SmartAsset — Gas Prices Hit Records in 2026 (April 1, 2026); TheWorldData.com — Gas Prices by Year Statistics in US 2026; California Energy Commission — Estimated Gasoline Price Breakdown (March 2026)

The price breakdown of a gallon of gasoline is the most direct answer to the question every driver instinctively asks when they see a new high on the pump display: “Where does the money actually go?” The answer in normal market conditions is that crude oil takes the largest share — 47% of the retail price based on 2025 EIA data — with distribution, marketing, and retail operations accounting for 36%, and taxes rounding out the remaining 17%. That structure means that when crude oil prices double, the pump price rises by roughly 47 cents for every dollar of crude oil cost increase, with the fixed-cents federal tax and relatively stable refinery/distribution costs providing a cushion. In the 2026 Iran war spike, however, crude oil’s share of the pump price is rising because crude has spiked dramatically while taxes remain fixed in cents per gallon — meaning the crude oil component at $4.52/gallon now likely represents closer to $2.10–$2.12 per gallon, reflecting Brent crude prices of $106–$114 per barrel.

The federal gas tax — fixed at 18.40 cents per gallon since 1993, a figure that has not been adjusted for inflation in more than three decades — is a notably underappreciated factor in US pump prices. Because it is expressed in fixed cents rather than as a percentage of the price, its relative burden on consumers actually decreases as pump prices rise, even though its absolute contribution to every gallon remains constant. State taxes tell a more varied story: California’s 68.1 cents per gallon excise is nearly four times higher than Mississippi’s 18.4 cents and more than three times the national state average of 33.55 cents. This tax disparity alone accounts for nearly 50 cents of the structural gap between California and low-tax Gulf Coast states — with the additional CARB reformulated fuel mandate and refinery proximity disadvantage accounting for the remaining spread. The practical implication for consumers is that state tax policy is the one component of gas prices that drivers can influence through political action — every other component is set by global crude markets, refinery economics, and distribution logistics.

US Gas Prices vs Records 2026 | All-Time Highs, War Comparisons & Historical Context

US Gas Price Milestone Comparisons — All-Time Records vs 2026
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  All-time national average record:  $5.02/gal  (Jun 14, 2022)
  2026 peak so far (May 7):          $4.52/gal  ████████████████████████████░
  Prior 2022-era record (Jul 2008):  $4.11/gal  ████████████████████████████
  2026 pace vs 2022 spike:
  ─ 2022: $1.48 rise over ~4 months (Feb 24 to Jun 14)
  ─ 2026: $1.54+ rise in ~10 WEEKS (Feb 26 to May 7)
  2026 speed of ascent: FASTER than 2022

  Inflation-adjusted comparisons:
  $4.11 in 2008 → ~$6.02 in today's dollars
  $5.02 in 2022 → ~$5.53 in today's dollars
  $4.52 in May 2026 → ~$4.52 in today's dollars (current)
  ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  9 of 10 most expensive national weekly averages (since 2018):
  All occurred in 2022 — the 10th occurred May 7, 2026

  COVID-19 low (Apr 16, 2020): $1.84/gal (national weekly avg)
  California COVID-19 low:     Not recorded below $2.60/gal

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Data Sources: Finder.com — US Gas Prices 2018 to May 2026 (May 7, 2026 data); NBC News — Oil Plunges on US-Iran Near-Deal Report (May 7, 2026); CNN — “US Gas Prices Shot Up $1.48 a Gallon, or 42%, to Record $5.02” (February 2023); GOBankingRates — What Was the Highest Gas Price in US History?; The Hill — Has Gas Ever Been This Expensive? (March 25, 2026); WalletHub — Gas Prices Over Time 2026; EIA historical data via FRED St. Louis Fed; EIA — Energy Commodity Prices in 2022 Showed Effects of Russia’s Full-Scale Invasion of Ukraine

The historical record context transforms the 2026 price spike from a number into a narrative. The $4.52 national average of May 7, 2026 has now joined the top 10 most expensive national weekly gasoline averages recorded since 2018 — the only entry in the top 10 that did not occur during the 2022 Russia-Ukraine price shock. That comparison encapsulates how severe the 2026 crisis is: nine of the ten worst pump-price weeks in the modern era were produced by the single largest and most disruptive geopolitical event in European history since World War II, and the 2026 Iran war spike has already matched that historic level within just ten weeks of its onset — compared to the four months it took in 2022 to reach peak pricing. The speed of the 2026 ascent — $1.54 in ten weeks versus $1.48 in four months in 2022 — is what distinguishes it structurally from prior shocks.

The inflation-adjusted record deserves particular attention. When the $4.11 peak of July 2008 is adjusted to 2026 dollars, it represents approximately $6.02 per gallon — meaning that in real purchasing power terms, the 1970s and 2008-era crises were actually more severe than even the 2022 record. The 1971 average of $0.36/gal translates to roughly $3.30 in today’s money — virtually identical to the 2023 national average in nominal terms. The inflation-adjusted long-run average of US gasoline since 1929 is $3.45 per gallon, which means the current $4.52 level is approximately $1.07 above the century-long real average. For American consumers who feel that gas has never been this expensive, the historical data offers a more nuanced picture: in nominal terms, it has never been cheaper to buy gas than it was in April 2020 ($1.84/gal weekly), but in real purchasing power terms, the 2008 crisis and the 1970s oil shocks imposed comparable or greater burdens on household budgets relative to what typical wages could cover.

US Gas Price Outlook 2026 | EIA Forecasts, SPR, OPEC & Recovery Timeline

EIA April 2026 STEO Gas Price Forecast — Scenario Timeline
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

  EIA BASE CASE (assumes conflict ends, Hormuz gradually reopens):
  ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  Brent crude:   $115/barrel peak (Q2 2026) → <$90/barrel (Q4 2026)
                 → avg $76/barrel in 2027

  Retail gas:    Peak ~$4.30/gal monthly avg (April 2026 STEO)
                 Full year 2026 avg: >$3.70/gal
                 Diesel peak: >$5.80/gal (April 2026)

  RISK SCENARIO (Hormuz stays closed into summer):
  ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  $5.00/gal+ national average (analyst Lipow / CNN, May 2026)
  Could approach all-time record of $5.02/gal (Jun 2022)

  Recovery timeline (even with ceasefire):
  ─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  "Months to get back to pre-war levels, if not longer"
  — Rob Smith, S&P Global Energy (PBS NewsHour, May 2026)
  Insurance risk premiums on Hormuz transit persist long-term
  Vessel backlog clearance: potentially months
  Refinery run patterns require weeks to normalize

  OPEC+ relief measure:
  7 members agreed to increase output 188,000 bpd starting June 2026

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Data Sources: EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook April 2026 (PDF, full report); EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook February 2026; NPR — Gas Prices Up 30+ Cents a Gallon Last Week (May 3, 2026); PBS NewsHour — US Gasoline Prices Rise 50% Since the Start of the Iran War (May 6, 2026); CNN Business — Oil Pulls Back After Hitting 2026 High (May 5, 2026); EIA — EIA Expects Lower Gasoline Prices in 2026 and 2027 as Crude Oil Prices Fall (January 22, 2025, pre-war forecast); EIA — In 2025, US Retail Gasoline Prices Decreased for Third Consecutive Year (January 7, 2026)

The EIA’s April 2026 Short-Term Energy Outlook — the most comprehensive government forecast available during the conflict — is built on a set of assumptions that are themselves highly uncertain: that the conflict does not persist past April, and that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz gradually resumes but does not return to pre-conflict levels until late 2026. On those assumptions, the EIA forecast projects Brent crude prices peaking at $115/barrel in Q2 2026 before easing below $90/barrel by Q4, and retail gasoline averaging more than $3.70/gal for the full year. What this forecast cannot account for is the scenario where peace talks stall, the ceasefire collapses, or Iranian attacks on GCC energy infrastructure — a scenario that the May 5 flare-up in Hormuz violence demonstrated remains live. In the downside scenario, analyst Andy Lipow of Lipow Oil Associates estimated that gas prices could reach $5.00/gal if the strait remains closed through June — placing them within a few cents of the all-time national average record of $5.02/gal set in June 2022.

The recovery timeline is the aspect of the 2026 gas price crisis most likely to frustrate American consumers and policymakers who assume that a ceasefire equals a return to normal prices. It does not. S&P Global Energy’s Rob Smith articulated the structural lag with precision: even if both sides genuinely agree to keep Hormuz open, “it will still take months to get back to what it was pre-war, if not even longer,” because the risk premium embedded in shipping insurance rates, tanker routing decisions, and vessel traffic patterns will persist well after formal hostilities end. The roughly 2,000 vessels stranded in the strait need weeks to clear; refinery run schedules that were adjusted in response to the crude supply shock take additional weeks to normalize; and the gasoline inventories that fell for 11 straight weeks need to be replenished before spot prices meaningfully ease. President Trump’s promise that prices will “drop like a rock” when the war ends reflects political communication more than energy market mechanics — and the counterpoint from ClearView Energy’s Kevin Book is sobering: the scenario where prices drop very fast is probably a recession scenario, not a peace dividend scenario.

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.

Email ID:

Please enable JavaScript in your browser to complete this form.

Email

Email *

SUBSCRIBE