\u201cGas is pretty high right now. It doesn\u2019t help that we also have a baby, so we also have to pay for that,\u201d Collins said outside a gas station in Claymont, Delaware, where regular gas was $4.199 a gallon.<\/p>\n
Prices shot up after the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in February and have not settled down since. Crude oil traffic through the key Strait of Hormuz has plunged, and Iran has refused to reopen the waterway.<\/p>\n
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\u201cEverything points to the Iran War and the Strait of Hormuz,\u201d said Tom Seng, a professor of energy finance at Texas Christian University.<\/p>\n
Energy Secretary Chris Wright offered few specifics on when the nation\u2019s drivers might see relief at the gas pump, acknowledging that prices are higher now than Labor Day 2025.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes, they\u2019re higher today, but we\u2019re doing everything we can to push them down,\u201d Wright said Sunday on ABC\u2019s \u201cThis Week.\u201d<\/p>\n
The national average for regular gas prices is still well below the record of $5.02 a gallon set in June 2022.<\/p>\n
But diesel is a different story: It hit a national average of $5.85 a gallon Friday, a record.<\/p>\n
Trucks and other freight delivery systems use a lot of diesel, and that increased transportation cost is being passed on to consumers, whether at the grocery store or through package delivery services.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt doesn\u2019t really seem like there\u2019s an end to it,\u201d Collins said.<\/p>\n
Gas prices typically drop as the summer driving season ends and refineries turn to making a cheaper winter blend.<\/p>\n
But Seng said there are other factors this year even beyond the volatile situation in the Middle East that make future prices unpredictable. U.S. refineries are working at 98% capacity, many in the unusually harsh Texas heat. If there are problems there or a hurricane knocks some systems offline, prices will struggle to drop.<\/p>\n
And it\u2019s not just a Middle East problem. Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian refineries are squeezing diesel supplies. Chinese refiners are seeing declining outputs as well, said Matthew Metzgar, a clinical professor of economics at UNC Charlotte.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s just less gasoline coming out of those refineries,\u201d Metzgar said.<\/p>\n
Wright, the energy secretary, said the Trump administration was taking steps to increase production and that the markets forecast lower prices in the coming months.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at the futures prices, if you wanted to buy today in bulk gasoline for two months out in November, it\u2019s about $0.35 cheaper than it is today. So the marketplace thinks gasoline prices are going to move meaningfully lower,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Geopolitically, though, there is little a driver can do to knock down gas prices.<\/p>\n
But using price apps can help save a little money, especially on long trips where gas by the interstate could be 10 to 15 cents per gallon more expensive than at stations a short drive down the road, Metzgar said.<\/p>\n
Associated Press videojournalist Mingson Lau and reporter Gary Fields contributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cGas is pretty high right now. It doesn\u2019t help that we also have a baby, so we also…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[328,5529,1003,2276,197,34,19735,2222,782],"class_list":["post-281272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iran","tag-business","tag-climate-and-environment","tag-consumer-prices","tag-energy-markets","tag-general-news","tag-iran","tag-labor","tag-oil-and-gas-industry","tag-u-s-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/117228015741403983","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}