The Iran war has sent oil prices skyrocketing, with the impact being acutely felt at the pump. The average price of gasoline jumped to $3.63 a gallon on Friday, according to AAA, up from $2.93 last month before Middle East tensions escalated. Gas is now above $3 a gallon in every US state for the first time since 2023.
President Donald Trump has long fought California's efforts to curb tailpipe emissions and spur electric vehicle adoption, and last summer he blocked the state's first-in-the-nation ban on the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035. He's also routinely criticized California's highest-in-the-nation gas prices, which are largely due to taxes and environmental regulations.
Whether California gets its oil from the Central Valley or Kuwait or Venezuela or other parts of the world, [it] doesn't matter. It still affects the price of gasoline the same because the price of all those oils goes up. The spiraling prices are primarily driven by a surge in global crude oil prices amid the war.
According to AAA, the national average gas price has jumped to $3.45 per gallon today. One week ago, the average was $2.98 per gallon - a 16% spike in a single week. For context, the all-time record average was $5.016 per gallon, set on June 22, 2022.
In the worst case, this is a weeks, this is not a months thing. The Trump administration has been all in on lowering energy prices, and I would say quite successfully. We have seen a dramatic decline in gasoline prices, in diesel prices. Soon, you will see it in electricity prices as well.
A spokesperson told News 12 that prices are going up because of the price of crude oil - not due to a supply chain issue. According to AAA, New Yorkers were paying the lowest price for gas in four or five years. On Monday, it was an average of about $3 a gallon in the city, which was up four cents from last week.
The cheapest day of the week to buy gasoline in California and most other states is Sunday, says a new report by gas price expert GasBuddy. The analysis released Feb. 18 was a shift from previous years' reports, in which Monday was said to be the cheapest day in most states. GasBuddy found that Sunday is the most consistently affordable day to fill up in most U.S. states 41 states while midweek, particularly Wednesday through Friday, tends to be more expensive, the report said.
Hours after a nighttime raid removed Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from his compound, President Trump announced that the United States would oversee the country and assume control of its oil resources. "We're going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country," Trump said.
Research by University College London found that from 2010 to 2023, energy from windfarms resulted in electricity bills being lower by about 14.2bn than they would have been if gas had been needed to generate the same amount of power. However, the reduction in the cost of gas that could be attributed to wind generation owing to the cut in demand and not needing to build new infrastructure was much greater, at about 133.3bn.
In a bid to stabilize struggling crude-oil refineries, state lawmakers on Saturday passed a last-minute bill that would allow the construction of 2,000 new oil wells annually in the San Joaquin Valley while further restricting drilling along California's iconic coastline. The measure, Senate Bill 237, was part of a deal on climate and environmental issues brokered behind closed doors by Gov. Gavin Newsom, state Senate President Pro Tem Mike McGuire (D-Healdsburg) and Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister).
And so, we have groceries are down, energy is way down. Energy is way down. It was $4 and $5 for a gallon of gas. Think of that for gasoline, and now it's probably $2.25. There are some places it's $2. It's even it broke $2 in a couple of locations in the South. In places like California where they charge such high taxes it's higher, but it's still much lower than what it was a year ago.
Gasoline prices could fall more during mid-summer. 'This is a win for consumers. And if the stars align later this summer, we could even see the national average drop below $3 a gallon,' said Patrick DeHaan, GasBuddy's head of petroleum analysis.
