From EIA today. Look not only at gasoline, but also diesel
Unexpected? The link from oil price to gasoline and derivatives is one of the more robust in economics.
So… remember, each dollar increase in gasoline price above $3.98 is almost 100% attributable to Mr. Trump.
The message appears to be getting through:
“Trump approval rating today: Disapproval of Trump hits all-time high”
May 4, 2026
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2026/05/04/trump-approval-rating-at-record-low-new-poll-shows/89925776007/
Somebody needs to mansplain why public opinion is wrong and this is all just fine. Where’s Brucie?
FT had a good article on oil prices today. They argue we had a tremendous amount of oil in storage when the war started, and that has muted the price. But sometime between end of May and September that storage buffer end and $150 barrel minimum occurs. And it will happen fast. This is why time is on iran’s side and they are in no rush to ti end hostilities to their disadvantage. Unfortunately i dont think trump can keep the strait open using military might.
Its my understanding that US was actually a little low on their stored oil, because Trump was waiting for the price to go lower – then on a whim he started a war that drove them much higher.
you are correct, and sorry my comment was a bit vague. worldwide storage was pretty high, not specifically in the usa. dominos will fall by region and product (oil, gasoline, diesel, etc) over that time period. but it was an interesting article, in that it pointed out the world seems to have far more storage capacity than in past potential bottleneck events. however, a lot of that oil is locked up in pipelines and storage facilities that require a minimum amount to operate. so while we started with excess capacity, there is a cost associated with emptying out a pipeline (ie getting it restarted and operational again is difficult and costly). anyway, there argument is that a price increase will be nonlinear, and fast once we lose that buffer. I tend to agree. its probably why prices are actually lower than I would have expected today.
The Midwest took the biggest hit because of the BP refinery shutdown.
https://www.jalopnik.com/2163647/gas-skyrockets-a-dollar-week-michigan/
Meanwhile, two more refineries were already under scheduled maintenance when Whiting’s plant went down — an Illinois Phillips 66 refinery that typically produced 356,000 barrels a day, and a Marathon refinery that should return to production later this month.
It always seems that Midwest refineries are shutdown for one reason or another just as the warmer weather travel/tourist season begins.
just as a reminder, Michigan residents are paying $5 or $6 a gallon for gas under trump. and you expected otherwise?
Granted, a 50% increase in just over 2 months is quite a jump, but deflated by average nonsupervisory wages we are only back to 2024 levels, and below the entire 2004-2015 period except for the very bottom of the Great Recession:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1VTFC&height=490
When consumers stop adding it to their credit card balance, and actually cut back on other purchases, *then* it will be a shock.
For a less parochial and America-centric look, here’s how things are for the rest of the world,..specifically the vulnerabilities of some of the economies in the south Pacific:
https://freerangestats.info/blog/2026/03/30/pacific-energy
BTW, this is a great site for those of us who use R for statistical analyses.
Speaking of the rest of the world, the U.S. doesn’t have a physical shortage, but ROW does. One difference is that here, the financial price if a barrel of oil is pretty close to the price of a physical barrel. That’s not the case in many other places. When you see the Brent-WTI spread at $12, that’s not the spread on physical barrels, even though it’s about triple the historic average.
Also, during earlier episodes of high oil prices, we were not suffering from high tariffs, labor shortages, fertilizer shortages or drought. Nor was economic growth highly dependent on a single narrow sector. Nor was our fiscal stance as bad as today’s. At least now the Fed isn’t about to engineer a massive loss of household wealth, that I know of.
Not to be gloomy…
Gasoline prices are still high, but the local Costco station has reduced prices $0.25/gallon since last weekend. Why?
BP’s 440,000-barrel-per-day oil refinery in Whiting, Indiana, over the weekend unexpectedly experienced a brief power outage that caused one of its processing units to be shut down.
But De Haan said BP issued a statement that the Midwest’s largest refinery has operations back to normal. This should help regional refinery capacity.
https://bluewaterhealthyliving.com/news/local-news/michigan/michigan-gas-price-relief-on-way-expert-says-they-wont-go-higher/
Don’t be so disappointed Duckie.
Gasoline prices double and Brucie cheers he,saved a quarter? Yea hes,a Maga moron
I’m disappointed that it took so long for the ar-criminal-in-chief to end his illegal war, if he has, in fact, ended it. I’m more than disaapointed that so many people had to suffer and die so that the war criminal and his pal Bibi could play out their bloody-minded fantasies. I’m dissappoint that you co tribute so little of value to the conversation here.
I don’t really care whether BP’s Whiting plant has a booboo.
US DoE Petroleum Balnce sheet released 6 May.
Crude oil stock
SPR -5.2 million barrel. 392.7 million barrel in stock
Comm’l stocks. -2.3 million barrel to 457.2 million barrels in stock
Gasoline stocks. -2.5 to 219.8 million barrels of stock
Diesel stocks -1.3 to 102.3 million barrels
Crude import week ended 1 May. 727,000 barrel per day, cumulative average for 2026 1962000 barrels per day.
US exporting more than average LNG, which is also restricted by closing Hormuz.