Las Vegas Valley gas prices surpassed the $4 per gallon mark on Friday, jumping 32 cents since Monday as the war in the Middle East continues.
The price of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline in Southern Nevada on Friday was $4.02, according to AAA. That’s a 12-cent jump overnight and a 50-cent increase over the last month. Prices are rising in Las Vegas due to the war and seasonal operations by refineries in California.
The mark was the highest average price of gas in the Las Vegas Valley since Nov. 12, 2025, when prices were at $4.03 per gallon, according to AAA data.
Nationally, the average price for a gallon of gas was $3.32 on Friday, up from $2.99 on Monday.
Fix the situation
Patrick De Haan, lead petroleum analyst with GasBuddy, said earlier this week that Las Vegas gas prices could surge between 20 and 60 cents. De Haan said Friday that the increase could surpass that estimate, depending on what, if any action, is taken to end the Iran conflict.
“I don’t think we’ll go past 60 cents yet,” De Haan said Friday. “But it’s quickly becoming more possible. Again, my mistake in all of this has been that I believed that there would have been insurmountable pressure already to fix the situation. I would have not expected my calendar would have been full for five straight days of doing this. Normally after a day or two, something like this happens and it’s shocking enough that, oh, we need to fix this. That hasn’t happened yet and I continue to be befuddled with the president who doubled down again this morning, saying, we’re not going to make a deal with Iran.”
President Donald Trump said Friday that he would not strike a deal with Iran until an “unconditional surrender” by the country. On Thursday, Trump told Reuters that he was not concerned about rising gas prices and said prices would drop drastically when the war is over.
Oil prices
Oil tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz, a key passage to and from Mideast oil fields, has been disrupted by the war, resulting in rising crude oil prices. On Friday the price for a barrel of U.S. crude oil hit $90, up from $71 per barrel on Monday, the highest level since 2023.
As it stands now, the pace of gasoline price increases could slow by early next week, but De Haan cautioned the Strait of Hormuz situation will play a big role in where the market goes.
“But I have to admit, I don’t know what the president’s going to do between now and then,” De Haan said. “I do think oil prices would continue to go up because the Strait of Hormuz, 20 million barrels of oil a day not going to where it needs to go is a pretty big problem. Every day that continues, it’s a bigger problem, because you can’t make up for lost time. And that’s the biggest issue here is now we’ve lost out on the potential movement of, what are we at, 80 million barrels? And that is going to take a long time to fully get back.”
Months to recover
Due to the backlog of oil transport, the effects of the war could linger for several months, which could result in higher gas prices heading into Memorial Day weekend in May and the start of the summer driving season, according to De Haan.
“The issue here is that when prices eventually slow down, it’s going to take oil markets a while to heal from this the longer it goes,” De Haan said. “That’s becoming a new kind of fairly dramatic issue, too, is that some of the impacts could linger for a couple of months.”
Despite the recent surge in gas prices, De Haan doesn’t see them reaching the record levels seen in 2022.
“In 2022, when we hit record-setting prices, it was both a supply issue because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and sanctions, but it was also a demand issue because Americans suddenly had been let out of jail, so to speak, after two years of being shut down,” De Haan said. “Everything was wide open, and so demand skyrocketed at a time that supply plummeted. Both sides of the scale were tipped back in 2022, and that’s a fundamental difference this time around. “
Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on X. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
