Gas Hits Record $4.15 Over Labor Day

Wright acknowledged prices are higher than they were on Labor Day 2025 and offered few specifics on when relief arrives. "Yes, they're higher today, but we're doing everything we can to push them down," he said on ABC's "This Week."

He said the Trump administration is taking steps to increase production and that traders expect relief: "If you look at the futures prices, if you wanted to buy today in bulk gasoline for two months out in November, it's about $0.35 cheaper than it is today. So the marketplace thinks gasoline prices are going to move meaningfully lower."

Tom Seng, a professor of energy finance at Texas Christian University, was blunt about the cause. "Everything points to the Iran War and the Strait of Hormuz," he said.

De Haan, the GasBuddy analyst, wrote on X that "gasoline, while not at all-time records, is at its highest level ever recorded this late in the calendar year."

Drivers are cutting back. Nicole Collins, who planned a trip from Philadelphia to South Carolina, told the Associated Press her family skipped most of its usual summer weekend trips. "Gas is pretty high right now. It doesn't help that we also have a baby, so we also have to pay for that," she said outside a station in Claymont, Delaware, where regular was $4.199 a gallon. "It doesn't really seem like there's an end to it."

Randi O'Brien, 57, filling up her truck at a Phillips 66 near Evergreen, Colorado, put it shorter: "It's completely out of control."