Why $5 gasoline is about to force a major holiday shift

20 Sep 2026, 12:33 · The Fresno Bee

Autumn starts on Sept. 22, and, for years, one of the more pleasant aspects of the season is that gasoline prices have come down and come down a lot.

Don’t expect much of a break in the 2026 holiday season.

You might see some declines in the next three months, but nothing like in recent years when the price declines from September until the end of the year have averaged about 10%.

And that means holiday travel plans may shift.

But, you ask, isn’t U.S. gasoline demand pretty much constant? Not necessarily. U.S. Energy Administration data show that gasoline demand in July and August of 2026 was off about 1% from a year ago.

And going into the summer season, the Los Angeles Times reported, there were many indications that many families were planning to substitute long vacation trips with shorter excursions.

The reason you’re seeing high prices is simple enough: The war between the United States and Israel and Iran has disrupted global energy markets more violently than anyone expected.

Gas prices up 4% in past week; diesel up 6%

As it is, the U.S. national average price of gasoline was at about $4.47 a gallon on Sept. 18, up slightly on the day and up 4% seven days earlier, according to both AAA Fuels and GasBuddy.com. The year to date change: around 57%.

Diesel was at a record $6.4776 on Sept. 18, up 6.5% in a week and up 79% this year. It broke its old 2022 peak of $5.815 on Sept. 4 and has hit 13 new highs since.

Diesel is a critical fuel for the global economy because it’s the dominant fuel used in trucking, agriculture, construction, mining and other industries.

Some energy watchers who watch the global energy situation closely believe the U.S. average price of gasoline will go higher.

Jeff Currie, former head of Commodities Research at Goldman Sachs, said retail gas prices may hit $5 a gallon just in time for the midterm elections on Nov. 3.

Perhaps after the midterms retail prices will start to come down. But for many families, the damage will have been done. And they may choose to hold off big drives over the holiday season. The U.S. Energy Information Administration is forecasting retail gasoline prices will average $3.95 a gallon in the fourth quarter.

Yuliia Pavaliuk / Getty Images

Why fuel prices move up and down every year

Motor fuel prices, either gasoline or diesel, have distinct seasonal patterns. They typically rise from mid-to-late winter into late spring. Prices rise as refiners build stores of gasoline or diesel specifically meant for summer driving.

That means, in part, the gas you buy in the summer is formulated to handle hot weather and minimize air pollution impacts.

In the late summer, refiners switch formulations to handle cooler weather and reduced environmental worries, and prices drop until the cycle starts again.

More Oil & Gas:

The war disrupted everyone’s forecasts

Many memories are short, including my own. I wrote stories at the end of 2025 and early 2026 saying the global oil market was glutted, and one should expect prices oil price to fall and pull fuel prices with them.

GasBuddy predicted the 2026 U.S. average retail gas price would be about $2.97 a gallon.

The war erupted on Feb. 27 after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convinced President Trump and members of his administration that Iran’s government was fragile and vulnerable to a takeover.

Oil prices shot up just about immediately, and the war has just slogged on and on ever since.

And, as my colleague Moz Farooque noted, even mighty JP Morgan Chase won’t hazard a guess on how the war ends.

“We simply don’t know how to model the endgame,” its analysts wrote.

Stocks have slowed their gains since midsummer. The last time the S&P 500 hit a 52-week high was on Aug. 13.

The Ukraine-Russia, Chinese complications

The Ukraine-Russia war has been made more bitter and costly because Ukraine has been able to use cheaply produced drones to attack Russian oil refineries from Moscow to Siberia. That’s forced Russia to cut back exports of diesel fuel to western Europe and elsewhere.

The war in the Gulf has produced deep declines in the shipments of crude oil through the Strait of Hormuz. The strait is the key link between the oil fields around the Persian Gulf and global market. Before the war, about 20% of the world’s crude oil passed through the strait every day.

To cope with the disruptions, many countries, including the United States, drew down their reserves. For many months, China, the biggest buyer of Iranian oil, didn’t buy it. But its reserves were drawn down, and it has recently been forced to buy new supplies on the global market.

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This story was originally published September 20, 2026 at 5:33 AM.