Pain at the pump

Gasoline is refined crude oil, so the two prices move together; indexed to 2019, the lines barely separate. Economists have long studied a small asymmetry: pump prices tend to rise quickly when crude jumps and fall more slowly when it drops. They call it "rockets and feathers."

The extremes are all here. In April 2020, with storage full and demand gone, WTI crude briefly traded at −$36.98 a barrel, a one-day event too short to show at this scale. Two years later, after Russia's invasion of Ukraine, WTI topped $120 a barrel and regular gas averaged a record $5.01 a gallon in mid-June 2022.

Prices are climbing again. In late August 2026 regular gas averaged $4.08 a gallon and WTI $83.90 a barrel, both up more than 30% from a year earlier.