Gas and travel prices could continue to spiral as tanker traffic stalls near Iran

Gas and travel prices could continue to spiral as tanker traffic stalls near Iran

The price of oil surging over the weekend sent global markets into a frenzy.

Scripps News

The price of a barrel of crude oil topped $100 on Monday for the first time since 2022.

American drivers are already feeling the pain at the pump.

The average price for a gallon of regular gas on Monday was $3.48, up nearly 50 cents from a week ago.

And prices could continue to increase with oil tankers held up in the Strait of Hormuz.

"Gas prices will likely continue advancing. Oil prices will likely keep climbing until that oil can move again," said GasBuddy's Patrick de Haan.

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That will impact air travel, too, because airlines are dependent on jet fuel from crude oil.

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"Airline prices will be immediate, both in terms of demand destruction, because the prices are going to go up so much that there's a lot of people who may be traveling who decide not to travel," said Babak Hefezi, Adjunct Professor of International Business at American University.

But economists and analysts say a hold up on movement in the Strait of Hormuz, including cargo ships, has the potential to ripple across all parts of global economies.

"The waterway is key for a whole host of products and also oil used in other industries. So we can expect people to pay more for their petrol, more for their food, more for almost any good you can think of, really," said Chris Beauchamp, Chief Marketing Analyst for IG.

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Over the weekend, President Trump appeared to downplay the growing problem.

"But there's a lot of oil, we've got a lot of oil. Our country has a tremendous amount that we have. There's a lot of oil out there that will get used very quickly," he said.

The U.S. only gets a fraction of its oil from the Middle East. But that doesn't mean Americans won't feel the aftershocks of this conflict.

"The damages that have been already done to the ports are not something that we can just stop the war and everything will back to normal. This is something that's going to take 12 to 18 months to fix," Hefezi said.

 

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