Maybe you got lucky on Oct. 22. You stopped at your usual filling station and found the price for a gallon of gas was down a little.
Not everyone was able to experience that modest rush of happiness that you saved a penny or so a gallon — 15 cents on a 15-gallon fill-up.
In fact, the U.S. average gasoline price moved higher, whether you’re looking at data from AAA Fuel Prices or GasBuddy.com. AAA’s price was at $4.27 a gallon. GasBuddy was at $4.279 a gallon.
Both prices are up more than 50% in 2026.
Prices were higher in states like Michigan, Iowa and Indiana and lower in Texas, Louisiana and Georgia.
The national averages moved higher with oil prices. These were rising because of fears war in the Middle East would erupt again, perhaps as soon as Nov. 4, a day after the U.S. midterm elections.
Light sweet crude oil, the benchmark U.S. crude, finished at $99.47 per 42-gallon barrel, up 2.4% on the day. Brent, the global benchmark, settled at $113.17 a barrel, up $4.25 or 4%.
The prompt: A drone attack on Saudi Aramco’s Shaybah field that killed two people, as the Yemen-based Houthis continue attacks on the kingdom, wrote Brian Martin and Daniel Hynes of ANZ Research in Australia in a note shared with TheStreet.
The United States moved some nonessential staff and family out of Saudi Arabia. While production in Saudi Arabia wasn’t disrupted, Martin and Hynes said, “The increasing focus on energy infrastructure points to higher risks of a disruption.”
Attack plans being readied
The United States and Israel have been developing specific plans to attack Iran after the elections, The New York Times reported. But President Donald Trump has not yet given the OK for an attack.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has visited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the plans, and the U.S. military aircraft have been flying over Iranian territory, checking out the country’s military and energy infrastructure and sites that launch missiles and drones.
The war worries also weighed on U.S. stocks on Oct. 22. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index fell 1.2%, with technology stocks hit the hardest. Oil stocks were mostly lower, according to the S&P 500 Energy Sector SPDR exchange-traded fund (XLE). Shell (SHEL) and ExxonMobil (XOM) saw small gains.
Global supplies recover, but shipping costs soar
Global oil prices have remained very high since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28. But, in a huge irony, physical supplies of oil on the world market are actually higher than before the war began.
What’s keeping prices up is the cost to ship oil out of the Middle East. A huge problem is insurance. Rates on tankers traveling from the Middle East to China are up 12 times prewar levels to about $1.4 million a day. Insurance premiums are now equal to 10% of the value of the cargo, up from 3% before the war began.
More Oil & Gas:
- World’s biggest oil CEO shares stark oil price warning as pressure builds and supplies run dry
- Market Braces for Even Higher Oil Prices
- Bank of America resets its oil price target with strong warning
Nuclear worries power U.S., Israeli concerns
The U.S. and Israel attacked Iran in 2025 and 2026 over concerns that Iran’s interest in nuclear energy would lead to the development of nuclear weapons.
President Donald Trump has made the nuclear argument a focal point in remarks about the war.
The Iranian government, since the 1980s, has insisted it is interested in nuclear energy solely for peaceful purposes. But the war has caused some hardliners to argue in favor of nuclear weapons, according to a report on OilPrice.com.
Related: Trump’s diesel deal with Russia runs into a math problem
