The prices could be ‘perhaps lower’ than when the war with Iran began, the Treasury secretary says.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Wednesday that relatively high gas prices will not last long but that any change is contingent on when the United States and Iran cease hostilities.
“I think the conflict will end, I think gasoline prices will come back to where they were or perhaps lower,” Bessent told the Senate Appropriations Committee on April 22.
President Donald Trump, he added, “has shown that he is good at getting energy prices down and that our energy dominance agenda has lowered prices.”
The price for Brent crude oil, the international standard, increased to $100 on Tuesday and hovered around that price on Wednesday. Meanwhile, West Texas International crude stood at around $92 per barrel.
The American Automobile Association reported $4.02 for a gallon of regular gasoline on Wednesday. Days before the U.S. launched strikes on Iran on Feb. 28, the price for a gallon of gasoline was under $3 on average.
Bessent did not make a prediction about when the war with Iran would end. A day earlier, Trump announced that he extended a ceasefire with Tehran to allow for the country’s regime to make a peace proposal amid uncertainty about whether Iranian officials would attend negotiations in Pakistan.
With the increase in gas prices, the U.S. Labor Department reported Tuesday that its producer price index, a measure of inflation, rose o.5 percent from February 2026 and 4 percent from March 2025. Energy prices surged 8.5 percent from February 2026, it also said.
The Labor Department said this past week that soaring gasoline prices pushed consumer prices up 3.3 percent last month from a year earlier, the biggest year-over-year increase since May 2024.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard fired on three ships in the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, throwing into question current efforts to end the war. The Guard seized two of the ships and was bringing them to Iran, according to Iranian media. Earlier in the week, Trump said the U.S. military would continue to blockade Iranian ports after the ceasefire was extended.
