Gas Prices Have Never Been This High This Late In The Year, Months After Bessent Said They’d “Come Down Very Quickly”

On May 4, 2026, three months after the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed to tanker traffic, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went on Fox’s America’s Newsroom and told viewers not to worry. “We are cognizant that this short-term blip up in prices is affecting the American people but I am also confident on the other side of this, prices will come down very quickly. The conflict will end… this gasoline, this temporary aberration, will be over in a matter of weeks or a month.” That day, AAA showed the national average at $4.44 a gallon. Fourteen weeks later, the pump tells a different story.

The Record That Actually Holds

As of Aug. 12, AAA had the national average for regular unleaded at $4.03 a gallon, with diesel at $5.40. Patrick De Haan, GasBuddy’s head of petroleum research, put it precisely: the national average “is now at its highest ever level this late in the calendar year, according to GasBuddy data. Meaning the national average has never been above $4/gal after Aug. 12 in any previous year, ever.” This is a seasonal record only. Nominal prices remain below the 2008 peak near $4.11 and the 2022 peak near $5.02. On the calendar, Americans have never paid this much for fuel in mid-August.

Bessent’s Forecast

Bessent’s optimism had reasoning. He cited the UAE’s exit from OPEC, OPEC’s plans to pump more, and record U.S. crude deliveries, adding “Help is on the way as of today. I think that the market will be very well supplied… We’re the number one energy super power in the world and we have never delivered so much crude.” The forecast was specific: weeks or a month. But the timeline missed by a wide margin.

What Happened Instead

Prices eased after May 4 rather than climbing further. They fell from the May peak around $4.44 to $4.56, drifting lower through June and July, bottoming at $3.78 on July 6 before pushing back above $4. Normalization never arrived. Gas has spent 103 days, 46% of the year so far, at or above $4/gallon, the most such days since 2022. A year earlier, regular averaged $3.20 and diesel $3.70. Prices are up roughly 26% and 46% respectively year over year. July’s Consumer Price Index showed the gasoline index down 2.9% from June, still up 24.6% year over year.

The Strait That Won’t Reopen

The reason sits in the Persian Gulf. Since the Iran conflict began Feb. 28, 2026, the Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries roughly 21 million barrels of oil daily, about 20% of global supply, has functioned as a chokepoint under U.S. blockade. Brent jumped from about $76 to $126 a barrel in March 2026 alone, the largest inflation-adjusted quarterly oil price increase in data going back to 1988, per the EIA. As of mid-August, only 14 tracked vessels transited the strait on a recent day, per intelligence firm Kpler. WTI and Brent futures sat near $82 and $88 a barrel, while Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at Gulf Oil, noted gasoline on global spot markets was selling around $130 a barrel, well above futures levels.

What Fall Looks Like

Kloza told Yahoo Finance “Regardless, the final third of 2026 will be considerably more expensive than what we’ve witnessed in previous years.” He projected pump prices could hover between $3.60 and $3.90 a gallon by this fall’s midterm elections absent hurricane disruptions, still the highest ever for that time of year. The EIA’s 2026 forecast calls for an average retail gasoline price of $3.78 a gallon for the year overall. Consumer sentiment sits at 49.5 as of June, in the 9th percentile historically. Weeks or a month became a summer of record seasonal prices with no clear end date, and voters heading to the polls will notice.

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