The price of travel this second week of Spring Break has been high and climbing -- Operation Epic Fury in Iran is only part of it, because we have to keep in mind that the price of gasoline and plane tickets routinely go up starting this time of year anyway.
GasBuddy's petroleum analyst Patrick DeHaan says the average gasoline prices in Texas have risen 57.5 cents per gallon since the Iran conflict began two weeks ago Saturday.
In a statement, he said this week:
With additional attacks across the Middle East over the weekend pushing oil above $100 per barrel for the first time in years, fuel markets are now rapidly recalibrating to the risk of prolonged disruption to global supply flows. As a result, gasoline prices in many states could climb another 20 to 50 cents per gallon this week, with price-cycling markets potentially seeing increases as early as today. Diesel may rise even more sharply, with increases of 35 to 75 cents per gallon possible as global distillate markets react. While the situation remains highly fluid, consumers are already beginning to feel the impact as energy markets adjust to this sudden escalation.”
But it doesn't look like oil markets are impressed with promises from President Donald Trump that the Strait of Hormuz will be reopened or that oil will be released from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in Texas and Louisiana, because the price of oil didn't go down as expected following each of those announcements, it has been creeping up anyway to past $100.
GasBuddy's other analyst, Matt McClean says as long as the Strait of Hormuz is closed, oil is going to be at a premium because nations like India, South Korea, Japan and China are going to start running out of oil and therefore gasoline and lots of other products.
"Anything that gets that Strait of Hormuz open and anything that can get that open, the better for everyone on this planet is going to be, and we're certainly not going to see any shortage of supply in America because we've got more oil than we know what to do with."
But the price of oil is causing the price of jet fuel to rise considerably too, from around $85 per barrel to $150 or more over the past two weeks.
Airlines of course are not happy about this and are passing the costs along to customers in the form of increases in the price of seats.
Airlines are also experiencing higher operational costs, longer flight routes and additional technical stops because of airspace restrictions caused by the war in Iran as well as cancelled or diverted flights in the Middle East.
And then there are the much-talked-about delays in getting through the security lines at airports around America because thousands of Transportation Safety Administration agents have been calling out sick after their paychecks stopped coming in when Congress couldn't compromise to get a spending bill passed because Democrats ceased funding portions of the Department of Homeland Security in an effort to reorganize immigration and border patrol departments.