“Americans will pay $1.5 billion more at the gas pump just this week,” Newsom warns as prices surge
WASHINGTON — A new claim that Americans will pay $1.5 billion more at the gas pump just this week is rooted in the sharp rise in fuel prices following the U.S.-Iran war, though the figure is best understood as an analyst estimate rather than an official government total. National average gasoline prices climbed to $3.539 a gallon on March 10, up from $3.109 a week earlier, according to AAA, after already jumping to $3.25 by March 5 as Middle East tensions pushed crude oil higher.
The basic math behind the estimate is straightforward. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says motor gasoline product supplied has recently been running at roughly 8.5 million barrels a day over the past four weeks, which works out to about 357 million gallons a day or roughly 2.5 billion gallons over a week. Multiply that weekly fuel volume by a price increase in the neighborhood of 50 to 60 cents a gallon, and the added consumer cost lands in the range of roughly $1.25 billion to $1.5 billion for a single week. That is why the number has circulated so widely: it is a rough but plausible estimate of what a sudden nationwide spike means in aggregate.
What is driving the increase is the war-driven shock in global oil markets. Reuters reported that U.S. retail gasoline prices jumped more than 10% in a week as the conflict with Iran disrupted energy flows and sent oil above $90 a barrel, while analysts warned prices could rise further into the $3.50 to $3.70 range if oil stayed elevated. Earlier Reuters reporting said prices were expected to move above $3 per gallon almost immediately after the strikes because the conflict threatened oil moving through the Strait of Hormuz, a route that handles about a fifth of the world’s oil tanker traffic.
The exact $1.5 billion figure appears to come from fuel-market analysts and political messaging built on those price jumps, not from a federal accounting release. California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office used the number Tuesday in attacking Trump’s handling of the Iran conflict, saying Americans were paying that much more “this week alone.” Around the same time, GasBuddy analyst Patrick De Haan posted that over the next week, the recent spike would translate into “nearly $1.5 billion in additional fuel spending compared to early March.”
That means the claim is not made up, but it also is not a settled invoice. It depends on the comparison point. If the benchmark is early March, when federal data showed the national average around $3.015 a gallon on March 2, the increase to today’s $3.539 is about 52 cents a gallon, which gets very close to that $1.5 billion range when applied to a full week of nationwide gasoline use. If the benchmark is only one week ago, the increase is smaller — about 43 cents — and the total extra weekly spending would come in lower.
For consumers, the broader point is simpler than the math: the rise is large enough to be felt fast. Reuters has reported that the fuel surge is becoming a political headache because higher pump prices hit households immediately and can spill into shipping, food and freight costs as diesel climbs too. If the conflict continues or worsens, analysts say the added pain at the pump could keep growing.
