Four dollars fifteen a gallon. This is what an American motorist paid at the pump on Labor Day, while the barrel of WTI climbed towards 94 dollars and the Strait of Hormuz began its seventh month of latent war.
WTI (American oil benchmark) is close to $94 per barrel on September 9, 2026, up 47% year-on-year, under the effect of the escalation between Washington and Tehran in the Strait of Hormuz.
Donald Trump promises gasoline at $3 per gallon, or even below $2 "eventually", as soon as victory is proclaimed in Iran, a month after a February promise already denied by GasBuddy: motorists today pay $4.15.
Bitcoin moved around $79,000 on September 8, a calmness comparable to its reactions during previous peaks of tension in Hormuz.
It all started on February 28, 2026, when Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz following American and Israeli strikes. An agreement signed on June 17 between Washington and Tehran opened a sixty-day window without rights of passage, with a resumption of commercial traffic the next day. The truce did not last long. From July 7 and 8, a new wave of strikes on merchant ships reignited the conflict. On July 14, Washington reimposed its blockade on the Iranian flag, and the June agreement in turn expired on August 17, without having been extended.
Since then, the gears have tightened. On Tuesday, September 1, the American army struck two Iranian oil tankers for the first time in direct retaliation for attacks on merchant ships: until then, the strikes were aimed at preventing the blockade from being breached, not at punishing. Four days later, Saturday September 5, three additional tankers were targeted near Kharg Island, in the Gulf of Oman and near Jask. Tehran responded with two ballistic missiles fired at American warships, without causing any casualties on the American side according to Centcom. Five tankers hit in one week. The US Naval Institute recorded, as of August 21, 74 attacks on ships and 19 sailors dead since the start of the conflict at the end of February. Traffic is trickling. Barely ten ships per day still use the strait, compared to more than a hundred before the crisis.
WTI is trading at $93.91 per barrel on September 9, 2026, according to Trading Economics, an increase of 14.35% over the month and 47.50% over the year.
Brent closed Friday September 4 at $96.28 compared to around $70 before the conflict, according to Al Jazeera. Diesel broke its all-time high at $5.85 per gallon.
Trump, for his part, is not giving up. On September 7 on Truth Social, the president promised that prices would “fall dramatically” once the war was “won,” to three dollars per gallon and then, ultimately, below two dollars. The problem is that this refrain has already been used. In his speech to Congress on February 24, he claimed that gasoline had fallen below $2.30 in most states, and even $1.99 in some places. Patrick De Haan, analyst at GasBuddy, immediately corrected the situation: the national average then hovered around $2.94, with only eight stations out of 150,000 below the two-dollar mark. Seven months later, a gallon costs $4.15 on Labor Day, 30% more than a year ago. Even a return to $3 by the end of the year would be an achievement, warns De Haan, war over or not.
This story has an air of déjà vu for the crypto markets. The market had already wavered in March, when a 15% rise in oil prices linked to the same Iranian conflict caused bitcoin (BTC) to fall below $70,000 on the day Iran broke off negotiations with Washington. The oil shock/BTC pair has become a little more commonplace since then. On September 8, bitcoin was trading around $79,000, far from collapsing despite a barrel close to its highest points of the year.
