Gas Prices Near 2026 High Weeks Before Midterms

The national average price of regular unleaded gasoline climbed to $4.46 per gallon on Friday, Sept. 18, 2026, putting it just 10 cents below the highest level recorded this year and within striking distance of the all-time record, NBC News reported. The surge comes fewer than eight weeks before the midterm elections, tied overwhelmingly to the ongoing U.S.-Israel-Iran war and the resulting disruption of global energy supplies.

Gas prices have risen 50% nationwide since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran on Feb. 28, 2026. Friday’s average sits 10 cents below the 2026 high of $4.56 set on May 21 — and only 55 cents below the all-time record of $5.01 reached in June 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine.

A Crisis Beyond the Pump

The gasoline figure tells only part of the story. Diesel, the fuel that powers the trucks, trains, and ships that move goods across the economy, has been far more volatile. The national average diesel price stood at $6.44 per gallon on Friday, up five cents overnight and 71% higher since the war began. Diesel first breached $6 per gallon on Sept. 11 and has been registering new daily all-time highs since, as energy scholars Morgan Bazilian and Jamie Webster explained in The Conversation.

The two fuels compound one another. Rising diesel prices raise the wholesale cost of getting goods to retailers and grocery stores, feeding broader inflation. The U.S. economy has already felt the effects: consumer prices rose 3.4% year-over-year in August, and on Sept. 16 the Federal Reserve raised interest rates by a quarter point — its first hike in three years — citing fuel-driven inflation, Al Jazeera reported.

The regional picture is even starker. At least six states now average more than $5 per gallon, with California the highest in the nation at $6.11. Michigan, Utah, and Illinois were on the cusp of $5 on Friday, while Indiana, Mississippi, and Texas remain the cheapest. Oil prices have tracked the same trajectory: Brent crude approached $105 per barrel Friday morning, with U.S. crude just above $103, according to NBC News’s price tracker.

How the War Choked Supply

The roots of the spike lie in the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway off Iran’s southwestern coast through which more than 20% of the world’s oil trade normally passes. Iran’s closure of the strait after the war began has disrupted roughly 20% of global oil supplies, and both Iranian and U.S. forces continue to conduct military strikes in the waterway. Insurance costs for tankers have soared.

A Pentagon briefing to Congress in April, reported by WSET, underscored the durability of the problem: clearing Iranian mines from the strait could take up to six months even after the war ends. University of Houston energy economist Ed Hirs told the station that Persian Gulf oil flows could remain throttled even longer by damaged regional facilities, predicting prices would stay elevated “at least through the end of the year, at a very minimum.”

A compounding factor has emerged far from the Middle East. Russia — historically the world’s second-largest diesel exporter — banned diesel exports in July after Ukrainian drone strikes damaged its refineries, tightening an already strained global market. On Sunday, President Donald Trump publicly pressed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to halt the strikes, telling reporters, “He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia,” and insisting the diesel shortage was “done by what’s happening with Russia and Ukraine,” not the Middle East, MS Now reported. Zelenskyy has said Ukraine will stop targeting Russian energy assets only if Russia halts strikes on Ukrainian critical infrastructure.

A Political Liability

The timing could hardly be worse for Republicans. With the midterms less than eight weeks away, higher fuel costs are dominating the economic debate — an issue on which voters consistently trust Democrats. A New York Times/Siena poll released Sept. 15 found Democrats leading Republicans 51% to 43% among likely voters, with 71% disapproving of Trump’s handling of the cost of living, USA Today reported. The president’s overall approval stood at 38%.

Trump has offered shifting messages on the issue. At a GOP convention in Dallas on Sept. 9, he predicted that “right after the election, oil prices are going to be tumbling downward,” while conceding it might “take a little bit longer than the midterm.” He has also claimed his administration will push gasoline below $2 per gallon — a level unseen since the 2020 pandemic.

Political analysts see the trend as a direct threat to the GOP. “This was always going to be, in some ways, the year of affordability,” Rich Meagher, a political science professor at Randolph-Macon College, told The Independent. “Donald Trump’s war in Iran is something that has contributed to the instability of gas prices, and I think that Democrats should be really trying to make that connection.” Brad Lockerbie of East Carolina University added that voters focus less on the absolute price than on its direction: “I think what is going to be of concern for the voters is the direction of change right now.”

No Quick Relief

Compounding the political pressure is the near-absence of tools to bring prices down. In March, dozens of countries coordinated a release of 400 million barrels of oil from strategic reserves — but six months later, the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve and many global stockpiles sit at their lowest levels in decades, making a repeat of that effort all but impossible. On Friday, French President Emmanuel Macron called for a G-7 leaders meeting on energy costs, floating the possibility of further strategic releases or the lifting of restrictions.

Analysts broadly expect prices to remain elevated. HSBC warned in September that Brent crude could reach $120 per barrel, while Bank of America assessed that a broader conflict damaging major energy infrastructure could spike prices as high as $150. “With falling stockpiles, even a sudden end to the Iran war is unlikely to yield significantly lower prices anytime soon,” Bazilian and Webster wrote.

For American households, the squeeze is already measurable. A Brown University analysis cited by NBC News estimated the increase in gas prices since the war’s start has cost Americans more than $50 billion, while the university’s separate Iran War Energy Cost Tracker put total added energy costs at around $106 billion, or roughly $809 per household.

With early voting underway and prices climbing, the question facing both parties is whether voters will blame the White House for a war that reshaped global energy markets — or whether, as Trump has urged, they will look past November. As Todd Belt of George Washington University put it, “Gas prices go up like a rocket and down like a feather. And it’s going to take a long time to change this.”