The average price of a gallon of regular gasoline hit $4.48 on May 5, according to AAA, capping a week in which pump prices surged 31 cents and erasing a brief consumer reprieve during April’s short-lived ceasefire. The key driver, analysts say, is the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow Persian Gulf passage that normally carries one-fifth of global crude oil shipments. Tankers have been stranded for nearly two months, and the International Energy Agency has called the disruption the largest supply shock in the history of oil markets.
“After the announcement of the initial ceasefire, there was kind of optimism that this really could be the beginning of the end of the conflict,” said Rob Smith, director of global fuel retail at S&P Global Energy. “And so crude prices came down correspondingly, gasoline spot prices followed, and so on and … the retailers lowered prices as well.”
But as the war continued, gasoline prices reversed course and began increasing again. “There’s a fundamental shortfall that will exist globally or fundamental struggle to meet that demand that will drive up price,” Smith said. “No matter what a government says or what any market person thinks, there is a true kind of upward pressure that’s being exerted on prices every day the Strait of Hormuz is constrained. And it is still severely constrained.”
One event that altered the trajectory was the Trump administration’s April blockade of Iranian ports, intended to stop the country from exporting oil. “Iran had been moving an unusually high amount of oil to global markets, so that was helping moderate prices,” said Jim Krane, energy research fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute. “The Trump administration decides they’re going to punish Iran, and try to put more pressure on Iran by blocking their exports, so of course that does put pressure on Iran, but also puts pressure on global oil prices and forces them up. That was probably a big factor.”
The underlying cost of crude dominates what drivers pay. In 2025, oil prices accounted for about 51% of the price of a gallon of gasoline, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Federal and state taxes contributed 17%, refining costs and profits 14%, and distribution and marketing 17%. When crude oil rises, gasoline prices generally follow — a pattern that has held throughout the conflict. Bob Kleinberg, adjunct senior research scholar at the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy, compared the average U.S. gasoline price with the price for a barrel of WTI, the U.S. benchmark oil, over recent weeks. “Not much of a mystery here,” Kleinberg said. “It’s not exactly proportional but the shape of the curves follows the same pattern, and really with very little delay.”
Markets remain exquisitely sensitive to news about attacks on tankers or stalled diplomacy. “The oil market is exquisitely sensitive to what’s coming out of the White House,” Kleinberg said.
In early March, at the start of the war, the price of gasoline jumped 48 cents in a week. The highest weekly jump ever recorded was 60 cents in March 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine, AAA said. A gallon of regular now costs more than it did in early May 2022, when prices kept climbing through Memorial Day.
No quick fix is in sight. “Even if there was a true and lasting resolution of the conflict, both sides agree to play nice and truly do commit to keeping Hormuz open, it will still take months to get back to what it was pre-war, if not even longer,” Smith said. “There will still be within the industry a risk premium associated with going through that region. Not that it was ever a perfectly safe journey, but the past few months have shown that it’ll be hard to convince shippers and insurance companies that the risk level will be similar to what it was in February. It’ll be a long time before anyone can be convinced of that.”