The price of crude oil is way down since the earlier days of the war in Iran, and that should result in lower gasoline prices too, but when will be get back to how gas was before the war in Iran?
That's asking a lot, since the cost in money and time required to return oil and gas markets to earlier days can take quite some time -- it's not nearly as easy as just turning a key and an oil well comes back to service after it's been shut down, and many, many wells have been shut down in the Middle East.
Texas geologist and oil analyst Art Berman says, honestly, we can't look for gas prices to go down to January 2026 levels quickly.
"We're going to open up the Strait of Hormuz and everything's going to snap back to normal? Uh uh. No way."
It's just that getting oil and gasoline pumping and transportation going is a slow process -- revving up machinery, getting tankers into place, renegotiating insurance contracts and hiring new people to captain those tankers takes lots of time.
"So if they fix everything tomorrow, it's going to be two months before the oil that starts moving gets to where it's going.
"So everybody's out of oil for two months."
The details are a little complicated, but Berman sums it up, noting that a lot of oil that would have been shipped just wasn't shipped, so the world has been digging into oil depots and underground reserves and China cut back on the oil it was importing and we've gotten through the billion barrel shortage -- so far.
But the gas ride may get a little bumpy over the next few weeks.
"We've lost a billion barrels of oil production, just lost it.
"And when you lose that much you're going to have a whole lot of rehab before you get yourself back to where you were.
"And that's in the best case."