From $1.72 to $5.01 and back to $4.36.
Every line on this chart is the U.S. Energy Information Administration's monthly average for a gallon of regular. Pick a region to see how far your corner of the country sits from the national line. Flip to today's dollars to see the inflation-adjusted picture. The numbered markers are the moments that moved the price. Tap one.
The moments that moved it
Dig deeper: how to read a gas price chart
Nominal vs. real. The nominal line is what the sign said. The "today's dollars" line scales every month by the Consumer Price Index so a 2016 dollar and a 2026 dollar buy the same basket. In real terms the decade's floor was about $2.44, the 2022 record about $5.66, and 2026's spring peak sits a little under $4.50 because it is already recent.
Annual averages, nominal.
| Year | Avg | Year | Avg | Year | Avg |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | $2.15 | 2020 | $2.17 | 2024 | $3.31 |
| 2017 | $2.42 | 2021 | $3.00 | 2025 | $3.10 |
| 2018 | $2.72 | 2022 | $3.96 | 2026 (Jan–Sep) | $3.82 |
| 2019 | $2.60 | 2023 | $3.52 |
Why the regions never match. The Gulf Coast sits on top of half the country's refining capacity and almost always has the cheapest gas. The West Coast is an island: few pipelines reach it from the Gulf, California requires its own cleaner blend that out-of-state refineries rarely make, and the state adds the nation's highest fuel taxes plus carbon-market costs. The Midwest swings hardest when a single big refinery goes down. The East Coast imports a lot of its gasoline and feels the Colonial Pipeline's health directly.
Seasonality. Prices usually climb from February into May as refineries do spring maintenance and switch to a more expensive, lower-evaporation summer blend required from about May 1 to September 15. They usually fall after Labor Day. 2026 broke the fall pattern; September was the most expensive September on record because the Gulf war premium came back.
Rockets and feathers. Economists have documented for decades that pump prices rise faster when crude rises than they fall when crude falls. It is real, it is small (days, not months) and it mostly reflects stations protecting margins on inventory they already paid for.
Where the numbers come from. EIA surveys about 1,000 stations every Monday. AAA pulls daily credit-card transactions from roughly 130,000 stations through OPIS. The two track each other within a few cents; EIA is used for history here because it is the official series, AAA for "today" because it is daily.
What you are actually paying for.
A gallon of regular is four bills stacked on top of each other. The biggest one is the crude oil itself, priced on a world market that does not know or care where you live. Then the refinery's cut, then the pipeline, the truck and the station, then taxes. Drag the crude price and watch the sign change.
52%
22%
15%
12%
A barrel holds 42 gallons, so every $10 on a barrel is about 24 cents on a gallon. At $100 crude, the oil alone is $2.38 of the price.
Dig deeper: the four layers, one by one
1 · Crude oil (about half)
Crude is a global commodity. A refinery in Texas pays roughly the same for a barrel as one in Rotterdam or Singapore, give or take shipping and grade. The benchmark Americans hear about, West Texas Intermediate, is priced in Cushing, Oklahoma; the world benchmark, Brent, is priced in the North Sea. When the Strait of Hormuz closed in 2026, Brent jumped more than WTI, because the barrels that could not leave the Gulf were Brent-priced barrels. U.S. producers do not sell at a discount to Americans. They sell at the world price, because they can.
2 · Refining (about a fifth)
Refiners buy crude and sell gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. Their margin, called the "crack spread", is the second-biggest and second-most-volatile piece. It balloons when refineries go offline (hurricanes, fires, maintenance) or when one product is scarce. In 2026 diesel margins hit their highest level since 2022 because the Gulf exports a lot of diesel and jet fuel and the Middle East's refineries were cut off. The U.S. has 130 operable refineries, two fewer than a year earlier, and no new large one has been built since 1977.
3 · Distribution and marketing (about 15%)
Pipelines, terminals, tanker trucks, the station's rent, the credit-card fee (2 to 3% of the sale) and the station's own margin, which is usually 10 to 20 cents and can go negative for a week when wholesale prices spike. Most stations are independently owned and make more money inside the store than at the pump. Branded stations pay for the name.
4 · Taxes (about 12%)
The federal excise tax is 18.3 cents plus a 0.1-cent underground-tank cleanup fee, flat since 1993. It funds the Highway Trust Fund, which is why "gas tax holiday" fights are really fights about road money. State taxes range from 8.95 cents (Alaska) to 73.6 cents (California), and some states layer a sales tax on top, so their take rises with the price. Counties and cities can add more; EIA's figures do not include local taxes.
What a barrel becomes
A 42-gallon barrel of crude yields roughly 19 to 20 gallons of gasoline, 11 to 12 gallons of diesel and heating oil, 4 gallons of jet fuel, and a few gallons of propane, asphalt and other products. That is why diesel and gas prices can diverge: they come out of the same barrel but serve different markets.
Summer vs. winter gasoline
Summer gasoline must evaporate less (lower Reid vapor pressure) to reduce smog, which makes it a few cents to 15 cents more expensive to make. The EPA can waive the rule in an emergency, which is what the E15 waivers in 2022 and 2026 did: they let stations keep selling the 15% ethanol blend through the summer, which is typically 10 to 25 cents cheaper, at the roughly 3,000 stations that carry it.
Same crude. Different sign.
On October 11, 2026, a gallon of regular cost $3.81 in Georgia and $6.31 in California. Nobody in California is paying more for crude. They are paying for taxes, a cleaner blend, carbon fees, two closed refineries and an island market with no pipeline to the cheap Gulf Coast supply. Switch layers to see how much of each state's price is tax, and which refining region it belongs to.
Dig deeper: why California, why the Gulf, why the spread
California: a $2.50 gap and six reasons
- Taxes and fees: 73.6 cents a gallon in state excise and fees, the highest in the country, plus the 18.4-cent federal tax.
- Carbon programs: the cap-and-trade program and the Low Carbon Fuel Standard add roughly 30 to 50 cents depending on credit prices.
- A special blend: CARB gasoline is cleaner-burning and only a handful of refineries, almost all inside the state, make it. When one goes down there is no spare supply next door.
- An island: no major pipeline brings fuel from the Gulf Coast over the Rockies. Imports arrive by ship, which takes weeks.
- Closing refineries: Phillips 66 shut its Los Angeles refinery in late 2025, and Valero announced the closure of Benicia for 2026. California lost roughly a fifth of its refining capacity in a year.
- Everything else costs more: land, labor, and the state's higher station operating costs show up in the margin too.
The Gulf Coast: the discount for living next to the refinery
Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama sit on top of about half of all U.S. refining capacity and the pipelines that feed the rest of the country. Low state taxes (Texas 20 cents, Mississippi 24.4) finish the job. The Gulf is also where hurricanes hit, which is why a storm in the Gulf moves prices in Ohio.
The Northeast and the Colonial Pipeline
Most gasoline between Houston and New Jersey travels one 5,500-mile pipeline. When ransomware shut it for six days in May 2021, stations across the Southeast ran dry within 72 hours. The Northeast also imports gasoline from Europe and Canada, which is why the Jones Act, a 1920 law requiring U.S.-built, U.S.-crewed ships between U.S. ports, gets waived in emergencies to let foreign tankers carry Gulf fuel north.
Price-gouging laws are state laws
There is no federal price-gouging statute. About three dozen states have one, usually triggered by a declared emergency and usually aimed at retailers rather than refiners or traders. The House passed a federal fuel price-gouging bill in May 2022; the Senate never took it up.
State tax holidays in 2026
Georgia suspended its 33-cent gas tax for 60 days in the spring, extended it, and suspended it again in late September. Ohio passed a 90-day suspension. Utah cut its rate about 15% through year-end. Illinois and Kentucky froze scheduled increases. Studies of the 2022 holidays found that roughly 60 to 90% of the cut reached drivers, and that prices drifted back up within weeks as demand rose. Fewer states followed Georgia in 2026 than in 2022 because state budgets are tighter.
Nine hands on the pump. One of them is yours.
The bars under each name are a rough measure of how much of the price that player can move, and the small print says how fast. The honest version of the chart has the global crude market on top and the White House near the bottom, with one giant asterisk: the President can't set the price of oil, but the President can start the things that do.
The world crude market
OPEC+ (Saudi Arabia, Russia and twenty-odd others) decides how much to pump. U.S. shale companies decide whether $60 oil is worth drilling. China decides how much to buy. Traders price the next war before it happens. Nobody is in charge, which is the point.
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OPEC+ controls about 40% of world supply and nearly all of the spare capacity, which is the only lever that can add barrels within weeks. The U.S. is the world's largest producer (13.9 million barrels a day) but has almost no spare capacity: shale wells either run or they don't. Futures markets in New York and London set the price every second; the physical barrel follows. Roughly 20% of the world's oil moves through the Strait of Hormuz, which is why one strait closing in 2026 moved the price in Kansas.
Refiners
130 refineries turn crude into fuel. Their margin swells when supply is tight, a plant catches fire, a hurricane floods the Gulf, or the summer blend switch arrives. It shrinks when demand sags. They do not set the crude price and mostly cannot change how much they can process.
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Refining capacity fell by about 250,000 barrels a day in 2025 as two large plants closed. Capacity is a years-long decision; margins are a weekly one. When politicians accuse refiners of gouging, this is the layer they mean, and it is the layer the FTC has investigated repeatedly (2006, 2011, 2022) without finding illegal coordination.
Your state legislature
States set the biggest tax in the gallon, from 9 cents to 74 cents, decide whether to require a cleaner blend, and run carbon programs. A tax holiday can shave 20 to 50 cents in a week. It can also drain a road budget just as fast.
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State fuel taxes pay for roughly a quarter of state and local road spending. Twenty-six states changed their gas tax between January 2025 and January 2026; most raised it. California, Washington and Oregon run carbon pricing that adds a visible per-gallon cost. State price-gouging laws exist in about 37 states, but they are triggered by emergencies and aimed at retailers.
Distributors and your station
The pipeline, the terminal, the truck, the card fee and the store's own 10 to 20 cents. Local competition does most of the work here, which is why two stations a mile apart can differ by 40 cents and why prices are higher where there is only one.
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About 60% of U.S. stations are single-store independents. They buy wholesale at the "rack" price that changes daily and pass it on with a lag, which is the mechanism behind "rockets and feathers." The brand on the sign (Shell, Exxon) usually does not own the station.
Weather
Hurricanes shut Gulf platforms and refineries. Harvey took a quarter of U.S. refining offline in 2017 and added 30 cents in two weeks. Deep freezes do the same to Texas. Hurricane Isaias shut two-thirds of Gulf production in October 2026.
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Offshore production usually returns within days of a storm. Refineries are the slow part: a flooded plant can take weeks to restart, and the Gulf's refineries supply the Southeast and, via the Colonial Pipeline, the East Coast. The Energy Department loaned 4 million barrels from the reserve to two refiners after Isaias to keep them running.
The President
Can release the reserve, waive fuel rules, waive the Jones Act, change sanctions and tariffs, lean on allies, and ask Congress for things. Cannot set a price, order a company to drill, or tell OPEC anything. Can start or end a war, which outweighs all of the above.
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See §5. The 2022 reserve release, the largest in history, is estimated by Treasury to have cut the price by 17 to 42 cents. The 2026 decision to strike Iran added about $1.50 within ten weeks. The asymmetry is the whole story.
Congress
Owns the federal gas tax, the rules of the strategic reserve, export law, fuel-economy mandates and the power to tax windfalls. Has not changed the gas tax since 1993 and did not pass a single gas-price bill in 2022 or 2026.
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See §6. Congress's biggest historical moves were slow ones: creating the reserve (1975), banning and then un-banning crude exports (1975, 2015), and fuel-economy rules that cut how much gas the country burns per mile.
The Federal Reserve and the dollar
Oil is priced in dollars. A stronger dollar makes a barrel cheaper for Americans and pricier for everyone else; higher interest rates cool demand. The Fed never mentions gasoline and moves it anyway.
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Energy is also the most volatile piece of the inflation the Fed targets. A gas spike raises headline inflation, which pushes the Fed toward higher rates, which slows the economy, which lowers oil demand. The loop takes a year.
You
Americans burn about 8.9 million barrels of gasoline a day. Demand barely flinches when prices rise, which is why spikes are so sharp. The slow levers, more efficient cars, electric cars, driving less, are the only ones that permanently shrink the bill.
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U.S. gasoline demand peaked in 2018 and has drifted down since, even as miles driven recovered, because the fleet keeps getting more efficient and about one in ten new cars is electric. Economists estimate a 10% price rise cuts gasoline demand only 2 to 3% in the short run.
Everything a President can do on purpose to lower gas prices is worth pennies to a few dimes. Several things a President can do for other reasons, sanctions, tariffs, a blockade, a war, are worth dollars. That is why the scorecard in §5 has two columns.
The levers in the Oval Office, with the price tag on each.
Each lever below shows how fast it works, roughly how much it can move a gallon, and the last time it was pulled. The size estimates come from Treasury, EIA and independent analysts; they are ranges, not promises. Open any row for the history.
Release the Strategic Petroleum ReserveSell or loan barrels from the government's salt caverns in Texas and LouisianaSpeedDays to weeksSize17–42¢ (2022)LastMar 11, 2026 · 172M bbl
The reserve was built after the 1973 embargo to cover a supply cutoff, not to manage prices, but every President since Bush has used it that way. Biden ordered 180 million barrels released in 2022, about a million a day for six months, the largest ever. Treasury later estimated it lowered gasoline by 17 to 42 cents a gallon. Trump ordered 172 million released on March 11, 2026 as the U.S. share of a 400-million-barrel coordinated release by International Energy Agency members. Refiners initially took only about half the barrels offered.
The catch is the cushion gets thinner each time. The reserve held 695 million barrels in 2016. It holds 283 million as of October 2, 2026, the lowest since 1982 and near the 250-to-300-million level engineers consider the operational floor. Refilling at $80 oil costs more than selling at $100 raised. Congress has also ordered sales to pay for budgets, about 290 million barrels across 2017 to 2028.
Waive fuel rules (E15, summer blend)EPA emergency waivers that let cheaper or higher-ethanol gasoline be sold through summerSpeedDaysSize10–25¢, where soldLastMar 2026
E15 is gasoline with 15% ethanol instead of 10%. It is usually 10 to 25 cents cheaper and is normally barred from June 1 to September 15 in most states for smog reasons. Biden waived the rule in April 2022; Trump's EPA issued a nationwide emergency waiver in March 2026. The savings are real but reach only the roughly 3,000 stations (about 2 to 3%) that sell E15, concentrated in the Midwest. Waiving the summer-blend rule itself would save a few cents more broadly but worsen ozone.
Waive the Jones ActLet foreign-flag tankers carry fuel between U.S. portsSpeedDaysSizeCents, regionalLastMar 17, 2026 · to Nov 15
The 1920 Jones Act requires ships moving cargo between U.S. ports to be U.S.-built and U.S.-crewed, and there are very few such tankers. Waivers let cheap Gulf Coast gasoline reach the Northeast and West Coast by sea instead of those regions importing from abroad. Waivers were issued after Harvey (2017), Ida (2021), and on March 17, 2026, when Homeland Security granted a broad waiver at the Pentagon's request, since extended to November 15 with a narrower product list. Shipbuilders and unions oppose extensions; a House oversight letter argued it showed little effect at the pump.
Sanctions, tariffs and blockadesDecide whose oil can be sold, and whose can enter the U.S.SpeedWeeks to monthsSize$5–$20 a barrel either wayLast2025–26
This is the biggest lever and it mostly points up. Sanctions on Iran (2018, 2025), Venezuela (2019) and Russia's largest producers (October 2025) each removed barrels from the market or forced them into discounted gray channels. Tariffs on Canadian and Mexican crude, floated in 2025, would have raised Midwest and Gulf refining costs because those refineries are built for heavy crude. The 2026 naval blockade of Iran and the strikes that preceded it are the reason this page's chart has a second mountain on it.
Pointing down: lifting sanctions (the 2016 Iran deal added about a million barrels a day), or granting waivers, as in November 2018 when eight countries were allowed to keep buying Iranian oil and crude fell 40% in two months.
Lean on OPEC and alliesPhone calls, tweets, summitsSpeedWeeks, if everSize0 to a lotLastOct 9, 2026 · Russia diesel deal
Trump's 2018 tweets at OPEC preceded modest output increases. In April 2020 he brokered a 9.7-million-barrel-a-day OPEC+ cut to stop oil from going to zero, the one time a President moved the price up on purpose. Biden flew to Jeddah in July 2022 and got a token 100,000-barrel increase, then a 2-million cut three months later. In October 2026 Trump announced a deal for Russia to ship diesel to ease a record $6.53 diesel price. Allies act in their own interest; sometimes those interests align.
Restrict fuel exportsBan or cap exports of gasoline, diesel or crudeSpeedWeeksSizeUncertain, possibly negativeLastCrude: 1975–2015 · Fuel: never
The U.S. exports about 1 million barrels a day of gasoline and 1.3 million of diesel, mostly from the Gulf Coast to Latin America and Europe. Keeping it home sounds like more supply, but the Northeast and West Coast cannot physically receive Gulf product without ships (see the Jones Act), so Gulf refiners would cut runs instead, which analysts estimate could reduce gasoline output by up to 750,000 barrels a day. The President has limited authority here without Congress; the crude export ban was a law (1975) and so was its repeal (2015). In September 2026 Trump called for a diesel export ban and the administration said it was "examining" it. As of mid-October, no ban had been imposed.
Open federal land and approve pipelinesLease sales, drilling permits, Keystone-style approvalsSpeedYearsSize~0 this yearLastJan 20, 2025 · energy emergency order
Federal land and waters produce about a quarter of U.S. oil. A lease sold today produces oil in three to ten years. Companies drill when the price justifies it, not when a permit allows it: U.S. output hit a record 13.99 million barrels a day in October 2025 under rules that had barely changed, and shale companies in 2026 announced buybacks rather than rigs even at $100 oil. "Drill, baby, drill" and "ban fracking" both describe the 2030s price, not this year's.
Price controlsFreeze or cap the price by decreeSpeedImmediateSizeShortagesLast1971–1981
Nixon froze prices in August 1971 under a wartime-style law. When the 1973 embargo hit, controlled prices could not rise to ration demand, so the country rationed by waiting: odd-even days, hours-long lines and stations with no gas. Carter began decontrol in 1979, Reagan finished it in January 1981, and prices eventually fell. The authority has lapsed; a President today would need Congress. No one has asked.
What a President can do
- Release or loan oil from the reservePennies to dimes, for months
- Waive E15, summer-blend and Jones Act rulesPennies, in places
- Lift, impose or waive sanctions and tariffsDollars, slowly, either direction
- Start or end a conflict that touches oilDollars, fast
- Ask Congress for a gas tax holiday, export rules or price-gouging lawBiden asked in 2022. Trump floated it in 2026. Congress passed neither.
- Direct the FTC to investigateDone in 2006, 2011, 2022. No findings of collusion.
What a President cannot do
- Set the price of gasoline or crudeNo authority since 1981
- Order OPEC, Saudi Arabia or Russia to pump more
- Order U.S. companies to drill, refine or sell at homeThey sell at the world price because they can
- Change the federal gas taxThat is a law. Congress only.
- Build a refinery or a pipeline this year
- Stop a hurricane, a cold snap, or a fire at a refinery
Dig deeper: the reserve, by the numbers
Congress created the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975, two years after the Arab embargo. It is four salt-dome sites on the Texas and Louisiana coast with about 714 million barrels of capacity. Peak fill was 727 million barrels in 2009. Emergency drawdowns before 2022 were small: 17 million barrels for the 1991 Gulf War, 11 million after Katrina, 30 million for Libya in 2011.
| When | Who | What | Level after |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | — | Full, essentially untouched | 695M |
| 2017–2021 | Congress | Mandated sales to fund budgets | 594M |
| Nov 2021 | Biden | 50M coordinated release | — |
| Mar–Oct 2022 | Biden | 180M, 1M bbl/day, largest ever | 347M |
| 2023–2025 | Biden, Trump | Refill at ~$75–$80 | 415M |
| Mar 2026 | Trump | 172M ordered (IEA 400M total) | 283M (Oct 2) |
| Oct 2026 | Trump | 4M loaned to refiners after Hurricane Isaias | — |
The chart in §8 shows the whole curve. Note the shape: a decade of politics has turned a 700-million-barrel cushion into a 280-million one, and the next emergency starts from there.
Congress owns the biggest switches and never flips them.
The federal gas tax, the reserve's rules, export law, fuel-economy mandates, windfall taxes and a federal price-gouging law are all Congress's to write. In both of the decade's price crises, 2022 and 2026, members introduced bills on every one of them and passed none.
Suspend the federal gas taxA "gas tax holiday"SpeedDays after passageSizeUp to 18.4¢, likely 11–16¢StatusFour bills in 2026, none passed
The tax raises roughly $25 billion a year from gasoline for the Highway Trust Fund, which the Congressional Budget Office already expects to run short by 2028. Biden asked for a three-month holiday on June 22, 2022; neither chamber voted. In 2026 Senators Kelly and Blumenthal filed the Gas Prices Relief Act (S.4032, House companion H.R.7919) in March, Senator Hawley the Gas Tax Suspension Act (S.4485) on May 11, and Representative Boyle a bill that would suspend the tax automatically whenever the national average tops $4. Trump floated the idea the same day as Hawley's bill. Majority Leader Thune was cool to it. The Bipartisan Policy Center put a five-month holiday's cost at $17 billion. Studies of 2022's state holidays found 60 to 90% of the cut reached drivers.
Ban or restrict exportsCrude, gasoline, dieselSpeedWeeksSizeContestedStatusH.R.8266 in committee
Congress banned most crude exports in 1975 and repealed the ban in December 2015, which is a big reason U.S. production doubled afterward: producers could sell anywhere. Representative Khanna's Gasoline Export Ban Act (H.R.8266, April 14, 2026) would order a ban whenever the national average stays at or above $3.12 for a week. Senator Grassley and others pushed a diesel export ban in September 2026. Refiners and most analysts say a ban would cut Gulf refinery runs and could raise prices in regions that cannot receive Gulf product by pipeline.
A federal price-gouging lawMake "unconscionably excessive" fuel prices illegal during emergenciesSpeedEnforcement takes yearsSizeUnknownStatusPassed House 2022, died in Senate
The Consumer Fuel Price Gouging Prevention Act passed the House 217 to 207 on May 19, 2022 and was never taken up by the Senate. It would have let the FTC fine sellers for "unconscionably excessive" prices during a declared emergency. Critics on both sides noted it did not define the term. State laws already cover retailers in about 37 states; the gap is at the refining and trading layers, where every federal investigation to date has found high margins but no illegal coordination.
Sue OPEC (NOPEC)Strip OPEC members of sovereign immunity in U.S. antitrust courtSpeedYearsSizeUnknown, risks retaliationStatusCleared committee 2022, never a floor vote
The No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act has been introduced in every Congress since 2000 and cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee in May 2022. Every administration of both parties has opposed it, fearing Saudi retaliation against U.S. assets and the loss of the one producer that keeps spare capacity. It remains the bill most members co-sponsor and least want to pass.
Run the reserveFund it, mandate sales, set the rules for releasesSpeedBudget cycleSizeSets the cushionStatusOngoing
Congress created the reserve, decides its size and has repeatedly sold it down to pay for other things: about 290 million barrels of mandated sales were written into laws from 2015 to 2018, scheduled through 2028. In 2024 Congress ordered the small Northeast Gasoline Supply Reserve closed; the Energy Department sold its 1 million barrels that May. Refilling after 2026 will cost tens of billions that Congress must appropriate.
Tax windfall profitsA surtax on oil company profits above a baselineSpeedNext tax yearSizeZero at the pump, by designStatus1980–1988; proposed 2022, 2026
The Crude Oil Windfall Profit Tax of 1980 raised far less than projected, reduced domestic output by an estimated 3 to 6%, and was repealed in 1988. The 2022 Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax (Whitehouse, Khanna) would have rebated the proceeds to drivers; it never got a vote. The point of such a tax is fairness or revenue, not the price; economists mostly agree it does not lower prices and may slightly raise them.
Fuel economy and electrificationCAFE standards, EV credits, charging moneySpeedDecadesSizeThe only permanent leverStatusLoosened 2025
Fuel-economy rules written in 1975 and tightened in 2007 and 2012 are why a 2026 car burns about half the gas per mile of a 1975 car, and why U.S. gasoline demand peaked in 2018 even as the country drove more. The 2022 climate law's EV credits were repealed in 2025 and the 2024 fuel-economy targets rolled back. These rules move the bill, not the price, and they do it by making the price matter less.
Every fast lever costs money a party does not want to spend (the Highway Trust Fund), helps a region it does not represent (export rules), or hands a win to a President of the other party (everything, in an election year). Prices usually fall before the bill does. Both 2022 and 2026 followed the script.
Dig deeper: the timeline of federal gas-price law
| Year | Law or action | What it did |
|---|---|---|
| 1932 | Revenue Act | First federal gas tax, 1 cent |
| 1956 | Highway Revenue Act | 3 cents, dedicated to the Highway Trust Fund |
| 1971 | Nixon price freeze | Wage and price controls, later extended to oil; gas lines in 1973–74 |
| 1975 | Energy Policy and Conservation Act | Created the SPR, CAFE fuel-economy standards, and the crude export ban |
| 1980 | Windfall Profit Tax | Surtax on oil profits; repealed 1988 |
| 1981 | Reagan decontrol | Ended remaining oil price controls |
| 1993 | Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act | Gas tax to 18.4 cents, where it still is |
| 2005, 2007 | Energy Policy Act, EISA | Renewable Fuel Standard (ethanol mandate), higher CAFE targets |
| 2015 | Consolidated Appropriations Act | Repealed the crude export ban; mandated SPR sales |
| 2022 | House vote | Price-gouging bill passed House 217–207, died in Senate; Inflation Reduction Act EV credits and mandated lease sales |
| 2025 | Reconciliation law | Repealed EV credits; expanded leasing; rolled back fuel-economy targets |
| 2026 | S.4032, H.R.7919, S.4485, H.R.8266 | Gas tax holidays and a gasoline export ban introduced; none enacted as of October |
Everyone buys the same barrel. Nobody pays the same gallon.
Crude costs about the same in every port on earth. What differs is what governments do on top of it: tax it heavily (most of Europe), subsidize it (the Gulf and Venezuela), or mostly leave it alone (the United States). American gas is cheap by rich-country standards, and the reason is almost entirely the bottom bar of the gallon.
Dig deeper: taxes, subsidies and what they buy
Europe taxes fuel to pay for everything else. In the Netherlands, Italy and the U.K., taxes are 50 to 60% of the pump price. Those countries also have smaller cars, denser cities and rail, partly because of the tax. Germany and several others cut fuel taxes temporarily in the spring of 2026, as they did in 2022.
The Gulf and Venezuela subsidize it. Saudi gasoline is about $2.35 a gallon; Iran's and Venezuela's are effectively free, which produces smuggling, shortages and the odd spectacle of oil exporters importing gasoline because their refineries are starved of investment. Subsidies cost those governments tens of billions a year and are politically almost impossible to remove.
Hong Kong is the most expensive on earth at roughly $16 a gallon, by policy: it wants very few private cars on a very small island.
The U.S. sits below the world average because its combined tax is about 52 cents a gallon, versus $3 to $4 in much of Europe. That is also why American prices swing harder in percentage terms when crude moves: there is less fixed tax to dampen the swing.
Record production. Record prices. Same year.
The United States pumped more oil in 2025 than any country in history, about 13.9 million barrels a day, and exported more crude and fuel than it imported. Gas still hit $4.50 the following spring. The two charts below are why "energy independence" does not mean price independence: American oil sells at the world price, and the government's cushion against a shock has been spent down for a decade.
Dig deeper: independence vs. insulation
Net exporter, price taker. The U.S. became a net petroleum exporter in 2020. It still imports about 6 million barrels of crude a day (mostly heavy Canadian oil that Gulf refineries are designed for) and exports about 4 million of light shale crude plus 6 million of refined products. The flows go both ways because refineries are picky about grades, not because of politics.
Why shale doesn't rescue the price. Shale wells decline fast and are drilled on Wall Street's timetable. After losing money for a decade, producers now return cash to shareholders rather than chase price spikes. Rig counts barely moved at $100 oil in 2026. Saudi Arabia's spare capacity, roughly 2 to 3 million barrels a day, is the only fast supply on earth, and it was behind a closed strait.
Refineries are the real bottleneck. Capacity peaked in 2019. Five large refineries have closed or converted to renewable diesel since 2020, and California alone lost about a fifth of its capacity in 2025 and 2026. A refinery takes a decade and billions to build, nobody is proposing one, and the ones that exist run near full tilt in summer. That is why hurricanes and fires move the price more than oil-field news.
What a cushion is for. The reserve covers a supply cutoff; at 283 million barrels it holds about 45 days of net crude imports, down from 150-plus a decade ago. Releasing it in a price spike trades future security for present relief, which is a legitimate choice, but it is a choice that gets harder every time it is made.
The President gets the bill either way.
Voters hold the President responsible for gas prices with a consistency that has nothing to do with the levers in §5. In 2022, 61% blamed Biden; "I did that" stickers went on pumps nationwide. In April 2026, 65% blamed Trump; by May, three-quarters said his administration bore at least a fair amount of responsibility. The two crises rhyme in almost every detail, including what Washington did about them.
Credit and blame should follow the levers. The levers that move the price by dollars are foreign policy and war; the levers that move it by pennies are the ones Presidents hold press conferences about. If you want to know who moved your gas price, look at the crude chart first, then at the map, then at your state capitol, and only then at the White House.
Dig deeper: what the research says about presidents and the pump
Presidential approval tracks gas prices more closely than almost any other single number, a finding that has held since the 1970s. Political scientists find the effect is partly direct (people feel it weekly) and partly a proxy for inflation generally. The effect is symmetric: falling prices in late 2022 and late 2025 coincided with modest approval recoveries for Biden and Trump respectively.
The market knows this. Prediction markets priced a new record gas price in 2026 in September; Republican strategists openly said their midterm chances rose and fell with the pump. Incumbents have an incentive to pull every lever in §5 before an election regardless of size, which is why reserve releases cluster in election years (2000, 2022, 2026).
What would actually insulate the U.S.? Less demand (efficiency, EVs, transit), a fuller reserve, more refining capacity in the West and Northeast, and fewer wars in the Gulf. None fit in a news cycle. The levers that fit in a news cycle are the ones this page measured in pennies.