The good news: American motorists won’t be facing the long lines at gas pumps the way they did the last time Iran roiled the oil markets in 1979, or need to scramble for gasoline as drivers in France did this week.
The bad news: Gasoline is going to cost more and the longer the U.S. military action goes on the costlier a gallon will become.
“Markets hate volatility,” said Matt McClain, an analyst with GasBuddy, which tracks gasoline prices in U.S. markets. “We have a largely volatile situation taking place in the Middle East, and it has created a lot of jittery nerves.”
That has sent prices up in the oil markets and gasoline prices have followed. “Gasoline prices and oil prices generally follow each other; they are highly correlated,” said Al Salazar, an analyst with energy industry consultant Enverus.
Since the start of the war, the spot price for a barrel of North Sea Brent crude oil — the international benchmark price — had risen nearly 5%, or $3.80, to $85.20 a barrel on Thursday. A barrel contains 42 gallons.
The price of West Texas Intermediate crude, which tends to trade at a lower price than Brent, on Thursday saw a more rapid rise, 7.5% or $5.62, to $80.28 a barrel.
Those increases get passed along in the price of petroleum products including jet fuel, gasoline and diesel.
In one week the average price of gasoline in the Denver metro area jumped almost 10% to $3.153, according to AAA, a federation of auto clubs providing motoring services.
“The news is even worse for those who utilize diesel fuel,” McClain said. “We are expecting it to rise nationally on average, to somewhere between $4.25 to $4.65 (a gallon) that would make it the highest price point since December of 2023 and that is the fastest weekly increase in the last 20 years.”
While prices are rising, American motorists need not fret about there not being enough gasoline.
The U.S., thanks to the development of shale oil, has become the largest oil producer in the world producing an average of 13.5 million barrels a day in 2025.
In addition, where the U.S. gets its imported oil has changed markedly since the 1979 oil shock. Back then members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, which was dominated by Middle East producers accounted for 85% of U.S. crude oil imports.
Since then, OPEC imports are down 77% and Canada has become the biggest source of imported oil for the U.S., accounting for more than 60%. Mexico provides another 10% of imported oil.
And the level of imports was down to 7.9 million barrels a day in 2025, while U.S. exports reached 10.7 million barrels a day.
So, if the U.S. is awash in domestic, Canadian and Mexican oil why does it matter what is happening some 6,100 miles away in the Persian Gulf?
The answer is that oil is bought, sold and priced on an international market in dollars and pricing decisions are made on the margin.
“Oil markets are traded utilizing the U.S. dollar,” McClain said. “So, if Australia decides to sell oil to Japan, for example, that transaction is in U.S. dollars.”
In that worldwide market, any loss of supplies will affect price, Salazar said. The market is down about 2 million barrels a day from Iran’s Karg Island oil complex and terminal.
Another 15 million gallons a day is bottled up because there is no tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz on Iran’s southern coast, a key transit corridor for oil to Asia, because of the war.
“Oil traders agonize over a million-barrel-a-day change, so this is a big number,” Salazar said.
The longer the war goes on the more pressure there may be on prices, but Salazar said the market is pricing a return to normal in about three months.
“That said, we don’t know the extent of damage and certainly Iran has struck all of its neighbors, and that has the potential to take some production offline,” he said. “And I think that’s where the uncertainty lies.”
The war price hike in gasoline also comes as the seasonal change to less air polluting but more expensive summer gasoline blends in Colorado. Those increases will come, as they do each year, in the spring or early summer.
That could add 10 or 15 cents to a gallon of gasoline. “But that’s a trade-off. You get cleaner air,” McClain said.
The one thing Salazar said he was sure of was that whatever the price people will keep driving their cars and trucks.
“You know, people complain with higher gasoline prices, but that doesn’t stop them from having to go back to work,” Salazar said. “It’s other parts of the budget that take a hit.”