Oil and Gas Prices Surge Pump Costs Amid Middle East Conflict!

Published Mar 16, 2026 by Michael Le Pard

With oil and gas prices surging pump costs is this the break motorcycle manufactures were looking for to lift sagging sales? Will we see more new riders on the road? Will this instead be the final nail in the coffin for gas powered 2026 motorbikes as everyone switches to EV? Oil is currently at $105 USD a barrel, nearly double the price from last month. A meteoric raise by any accounts. Add in the fact that the majority of the world’s oil supply is still from the Middle East, that’s not good either. The problem this time isn’t just the price of oil, it’s the underlying cause; War. War is seemingly the the common answer to the world’s problems today and the Pandemic taught us all about supply chains and supply disruption. Currently President Donald Trump talks about “2 weeks to flatten the curve” for oil prices, now where did we hear that line from again?

Not many readers may remember the 1970’s oil crisis, but here we are today. Combine that with current and growing AI Data Center electricity and water use crisis and we have a real bad mix on our hands. Did you know that major towns and cities such as Colón, Las Cenizas, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad are all under tremendous strain from AI Data Center water and power usage that they are becoming unlivable and may need to be relocated to a human habitable area? And if you think this isn’t a USA thing, Loudoun County / Ashburn), Northern Virginia and Saline Township / Washtenaw County, Michigan are in the same boat. I’m not an environmentalist but elimination a bottle of water per AI search sounds as ridiculous as using 1,000,000 homes of yearly electricity per Data Center is. Now there’s a stagnant economy and inflation; that’s called Stagflation, the same term you might have herd in the 1980’s when we had historically high double digit interest rates and high unemployment.

Thus, we have a real trifecta of War, Inflation and a Stagnant Economy. This is getting very complex, very fast and that’s one thing large corporations and Government’s cannot handle well. Speed of change.

So while big SUV’s roam the roads, we might just be seeing the end of that dinosaur, which smaller, more fuel efficient vehicles, like motorcycles and scooters take over. They have already done so in less developed countries where gas is expensive vs wages, maybe that will happen here too. If motorcycles prices too were not going in the wrong direction that is. It doesn’t take much research to find motorcycle prices are also quite unaffordable from many manufacturer. Interestingly enough, Honda has just started reducing their MSRP’s (not a sale price) as models are parked a little too long on showroom floors.

Now that brings us, dear reader, to my newest update, the Total Motorcycle Fuel Economy Guide v26! Updated for all 2026 and 2027 motorcycle models as well as going back to 1930 with well other 11,000 bikes in there. PLUS, I added seat heights, horsepower and weight for all 11,000 models. Yes, absolutely insane. But it just gets bigger with more USA, UK, Canada, Europe, Australia and Japan models plus electric motorcycle models!!

I hope you will check it out, it took nearly 6 months of work to update. 🙂

So let’s see how this all plays out in 2026. Hopefully this time the 2-weeks to flatten the curve does come true. My money in on years as this has become a religious war now and the last big one we had lasted a few hundred years. But hey, think positive!

 

Individual investors are chasing oil’s surge amid Iran conflict; institutions are thinking about what comes next

Mar 15, 2026, By Joy Wiltermuth

In Europe, the ‘bank and tank’ theme still looks attractive, according to Seth Meyer at Janus Henderson Investors

Individual investors have gone big in chasing oil prices higher. Now, it’s all about gauging what next comes out of the Iran conflict.

It’s easy to boil down what mattered most to markets over the past two weeks: the price of oil, the blocked Strait of Hormuz and how long the Iran conflict might last.

Global oil prices climbed back up to $100 a barrel on Friday and stocks slumped, despite the Trump administration’s decision to temporarily allow Russia to sell floating tankers of sanctioned crude into the market.

Now, it’s all about how long the Persian Gulf crisis might carry on, and which areas of financial markets could come out stronger.

“I think what the market’s trying to wrestle with is timing,” said Seth Meyer, global head of client portfolio management at Janus Henderson Investors. “I’m not thinking about the next four days. I’m thinking about the next six months, the next year.”

For individuals, the hot trade since the Iran conflict started has been buying the United States Oil Fund LP USO exchange-traded fund, a way to gain exposure to daily spot prices of light sweet U.S. crude.

Oil prices and the USO fund gained almost 46% since the Iran conflict began on Feb. 28, according to FactSet. That compares with a roughly 3.5% decline for the State Street SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY, a S&P 500 index SPX tracking fund.

The USO fund pulled in almost $1 billion from investors in the past nine trading days through March 12, whereas SPY was hit by $12.6 billion of outflows, according to FactSet data.

“Everybody is looking at that ticker for sure – especially in the equity market,” said Paul Christopher, head of global investment strategy at the Wells Fargo Investment Institute, about crude futures.

Yet oil traders think crude will ease in the not-too-distant future, a view informed by lower prices on commodity contracts that expire months down the road. “My take is that the market is beginning to perhaps start to think this is going to be a fairly short-lived conflict,” Christopher said Friday.

“We would be buying equities, here, on pullbacks and rebalancing out of the energy sector,” he said. He also recommends putting that money back to work in sectors like utilities, financials and industries, areas that could still benefit from a growing economy and the AI boom.

Financials have been hit by private-credit jitters and rising Treasury yields. They were S&P 500’s worst performing sector in the past week, falling 3.4%, while industrials shed 3.2% and utilities gained 0.4%, according to FactSet.

Wall Street tends to view geopolitical risks generally in terms of sharp, initial selloffs that quickly fade. But Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial waterway that transports about a fifth of the world’s oil supply and other critical global goods, is anything but ordinary.

See: The Iran war is already the biggest threat to global shipping and supply chains since COVID

“The economic outlook is increasingly shrouded in the fog of war,” said Bob Schwartz, a senior economist at Oxford Economics, in a Friday client note. In addition to the oil spike, gasoline prices surged nearly 20% in the past two weeks, he said, “delivering an immediate hit to household budgets-particularly for lower-income families that devote a larger share of their spending to energy.”

President Donald Trump has been touting his continued bombing campaign against Iran on social media. But in a nod to nagging affordability issues at home and the looming midterm elections, Trump also signed two executive orders Friday afternoon designed to cut red tape for home buildings and to spur more mortgage lending.

This comes as the Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge on Friday pointed to more sticky price pressures. With the surge in energy costs in March, investors will be listening closely to Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s press briefing due Wednesday afternoon for any comments about how inflation and the Iran conflict might influence the path of interest rates going forward.

The European Central Bank already has been weighing rate hikes if the conflict in the Persian Gulf pushes inflation higher. Increased rates could slow the region’s economies. The U.S. is an oil exporter, but could still face inflation pressures and uncertainty around the rate backdrop this year. All that’s evident in the 10-year Treasury yields BX:TMUBMUSD10Y sharp rise.

“But the fundamental reasons we are bullish Europe is two things,” said Meyer at Janus. “It’s banks and tanks. That’s it.”

Europe has been focused on deregulating its banking system and spending in the industrial space, which has been influenced by defense, he said. “The bank and tank theme, we don’t think that changes in Europe.”

The S&P 500 fell 1.6% in the past week, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA shed 2% and the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP retreated by 1.3%.

-Joy Wiltermuth

 

Trump is tapping America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve to fight rising gasoline prices. How much oil is left in it now?

Mar 12, 2026, By Victor Reklaitis

The national average retail price for gasoline has surged to $3.60 a gallon

Signs display the rising prices for gasoline at stations in Chicago earlier this month.

A much-anticipated and record-breaking release of crude oil from the world’s emergency stockpiles is starting, as the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve is set to provide nearly half of the backup supplies.

The International Energy Agency announced on Wednesday that its member countries will release a record-breaking total of 400 million barrels of oil, with U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright later saying that America would put out 172 million barrels from its SPR starting next week as part of the IEA’s effort.

The SPR had 415 million barrels of oil as of March 6, according to Energy Department data. In his inaugural address in January 2025, President Donald Trump promised to “fill our strategic reserves up again right to the top,” but the SPR – which has an authorized storage capacity of 714 million barrels – was only about 58% full as of last week.

The SPR was depleted in 2022 during the Biden administration due to a drawdown of 180 million barrels. That move four years ago, also made in coordination with other IEA member countries, aimed to offset the worldwide market disruptions caused by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This year, the IEA’s members are acting as an escalating conflict with Iran that began Feb. 28 and has driven oil benchmarks above $100 a barrel.

For most Americans, the financial hit is coming when they fill their cars with gasoline (RB00), a product of refined crude oil. The national average retail price for gasoline has surged to $3.60 a gallon as of Thursday from just $2.98 a gallon as of around Feb. 26, according to American Automobile Association data.

On Thursday, U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude (CL.1) was climbing by 9% to $95.51 a barrel, while global benchmark Brent crude (BRN00) was also higher by 9%, at $100.35 a barrel. Both benchmarks climbed to around $120 a barrel on Monday before pulling back.

Read: Spike in oil prices triggers talk of an economic doomsday scenario

Oil prices look likely to remain elevated as long as Iran keeps blocking the Strait of Hormuz, a crucial Middle East shipping route that typically handles about one-fifth of the world’s seaborne crude.

“So long as Hormuz remains closed, and so long as the bulk of the region’s energy does not enter into the global market, the pressure on prices to increase” and get “back above $100 a barrel” will be “inexorable,” said Gregory Brew, a senior analyst at Eurasia Group who focuses on both the energy sector and Iran. His remarks came on Wednesday at an event hosted by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank.

Trump offered some comments on Wednesday about tapping the SPR in an interview with an Ohio TV station. “We’ll reduce it a little bit, and that brings the prices down,” he told WKRC. In addition, during a speech in Kentucky on Wednesday, Trump said the record release coordinated by the IEA “will substantially reduce the oil prices.”

Myra P. Saefong contributed.

-Victor Reklaitis

 

Trump is scrambling to quell the rise of $100 oil. But the market keeps circling one cure.

Mar 13, 2026, By Myra P. Saefong

Other efforts to coax oil down prices – now at $100 a barrel – are like putting a Band-Aid on a shotgun wound, says analyst

The Strait of Hormuz is now at the center of the world.

Oil prices have vaulted past $100 a barrel after weeks of intensifying tensions with Iran, setting off a scramble in Washington and across global energy markets to contain the surge.

But traders and analysts say the market keeps coming back to the same conclusion: None of the usual mechanisms for pushing prices lower will matter unless one critical problem is resolved.

Such a breathtaking move for crude (CL.1) (BRN00) in such a short span reflects just how jittery energy markets remain, despite efforts by the U.S. and global energy ministers to calm fears that the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery for global trade, could remain effectively closed for a protracted time.

Read: Oil tops $100 again as Iran ramps up strikes and new leader vows to keep blocking Strait of Hormuz

‘There’s no replacement for 20 million barrels a day being shut in at the Strait of Hormuz.’Robert Yawger, Mizuho Securities USA

Every other effort to tamp down prices “has been ineffective because the Strait of Hormuz and its importance to the global economy is overwhelming,” Robert Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho Securities USA, told MarketWatch.

The strait is “not replaceable by stopgap measures,” like this week’s historic release of emergency oil reserves by nations in the International Energy Agency or the Trump administration’s consideration of a waiver of the Jones Act, said Yawger. “There’s no replacement for 20 million barrels a day being shut in at the Strait of Hormuz.”

Proposed solutions

The U.S. is considering issuing a waiver to a century-old law known as the Jones Act, a law mandating that only U.S.-made ships may transport cargo between domestic ports. A waiver would allow foreign ships to carry fuel to refineries on the East Coast.

Read: Trump’s next move to stop oil’s surge may involve a shipping law from 1920

This comes on the heels of the IEA’s agreement to release 400 million barrels of oil (CL00) from emergency reserves, the largest such release ever. As part of that, the U.S. authorized the Department of Energy to unleash 172 million barrels from the nation’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Read: Trump is tapping America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve to fight rising gasoline prices. How much oil is left in it now?

The conflict in the Middle East “is creating the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market,” the IEA said Thursday in a monthly oil report.

Disruptions and threats

Disruptions to the flow of global crude have been ongoing, including Iranian attacks on vessels in the Persian Gulf over the past few days. Oman was forced to evacuate all ships from its main export ?terminal at Mina ?Al ?Fahal, and two tankers were struck off the coast of Iraq, forcing its terminals to suspend operations, according to a Bloomberg report on Thursday.

Iranian-backed Houthis in Yemen, along with other so-called resistance groups, also are on alert and may joint Tehran’s fight against the U.S. and its partners in the Middle East, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday, citing Iran’s semi-official Fars News Agency.

The Fars News Agency reportedly said that the involvement of the militia groups could lead to the closure of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which controls traffic for sea vessels accessing the Suez Canal via the Red Sea.

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden.

The Bab el-Mandeb Strait isn’t quite as important at the Strait of Hormuz, but it is the fourth-largest maritime chokepoint for oil. Around 4.2 million barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum liquids were transported through the strait in the first half of 2025, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Yawger said the strait may be already effectively shut down due to fears of Houthi attacks. If the threats were to come to fruition, say a Houthi attack on a very large crude carrier trying to transit through the Arabian Sea, he estimates that could potentially be a $10- to $15-barrel event – suggesting that it would lift oil prices by around that amount.

“That would eliminate that route as a potential exit point for Saudi crude oil,” said Yawger.

Backwardation

Many other things still can go wrong in this conflict, and that’s a reason why prices have climbed so fast. Yet “backwardation” in oil futures prices – a situation where current prices are higher than prices for contracts for future delivery – suggest “acute short-term supply stress, but not long-term shortage expectations,” Frank Walbaum, market analyst at fintech company Naga.com, which offers online trading.

The flare-up in tensions in the Middle East “triggered a shift in the oil futures curve, with nearby contracts rising far more than longer-dated ones,” he explained.

The April West Texas Intermediate crude contract (CLJ26) settled Thursday at $95.72 a barrel. That’s around $20 higher than the $75.17 settlement for the December contract (CLZ26).

Oil futures that expire a month from now reflect expectations of easing crude prices.

The wide spread suggests that investors are betting that the current supply disruption “will not have a meaningful lasting impact on the oil market and crude prices,” said Roukaya Ibrahim, chief commodity strategist at BCA Research. One reason may be that investors believe the disruption will be “short-lived and that transit through the Strait of Hormuz will soon be restored.” How that might happen is anyone’s guess.

“As long as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed” any policies such as strategic oil-reserve releases or granting Jones Act waivers are “only a short-term fix, like putting a Band-Aid on a shotgun wound,” said Denton Cinquegrana, chief oil analyst at OPIS, a unit of Dow Jones, the publisher of MarketWatch.

“While there have been efforts to stem the high prices, they have largely been ineffective,” he told MarketWatch. “The longer it takes to reopen [the Strait of Hormuz] the longer the recovery” time for the oil market.

-Myra P. Saefong