Gas prices climbed to a national average of $4.44 per gallon on Thursday, backing up analysts’ predictions that costs will spike this week and defying President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that gas prices will “come tumbling down” soon. Speaking at a rally for Republican Senate nominee Michael Whatley in Gastonia, North Carolina, on Wednesday, the president told attendees that higher gas prices are “a very inexpensive price to pay for what we’ve done.” It is a concept that Trump has been repeating in recent weeks as gas prices have continued climbing. At another rally in Garden City, New York, in mid-August, the president had said that paying “a tiny little bit more for your gasoline” was worth the cost of ensuring “a very evil country,” Iran, could not have a nuclear weapon.
On Wednesday, Trump told rally-goers to “remember that.” He added: “It’s a little more. It’s even—if it was, frankly, even, it was a lot more. But that’s gonna come tumbling down.
That’s gonna be like a rocket ship in reverse.” But the decline he has been promising keeps being pushed further down the line as the war in Iran, which has destabilized the global supply of oil, continues with no clear end in sight. Gas prices are now nearly 50 percent higher than they were before the start of the conflict in the Middle East, when they had finally dipped to a national average of $2.98 per gallon. In 19 states, gas prices are above the national average of $4.44 on Thursday.
These include Vermont, New York, New Mexico, Wyoming, Connecticut, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Montana, Arizona, Michigan, Illinois, Utah, Idaho, Alaska, Oregon, Nevada, Hawaii, Washington and California. Gas prices have been surging across the U.S.—and in many countries across the world—since late February as a result of the effective chokehold imposed by Iran on the Strait of Hormuz, a key waterway where one fifth of the world’s oil normally transits. The long-term tightening of supply caused by another ongoing conflict, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has exacerbated the situation, as have recent strikes conducted by Yemen’s Houthis, an Iran-backed rebel group, against Saudi Arabia.
As of Thursday, drivers in California are paying the highest price for gasoline, at a statewide average of $6.09 per gallon, according to the American Automobile Association (AAA), up from $6.04 per gallon on Wednesday and from $5.90 per gallon a week earlier. The state has long had the highest gas prices in the country, due to a combination of high state taxes and fees, strict environmental requirements, special fuel requirements, and its isolated transportation fuel market. The gas price hike the state has faced since the start of the conflict in the Middle East is very much in line with the national average.
On February 28, the day the U.S. and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran, the average gas price in California was $4.64 per gallon, according to AAA data. In some parts of the state, drivers are paying even more at the pump, with Mono County reporting an average of $7.08 per gallon on Thursday. In a few counties, including Sacramento, they are paying prices below $6 per gallon.
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