Washington: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has expressed confidence that the national average cost of a gallon of gas would fall below $3 by the end of September, even as he said the timing depends on the trajectory of US talks with Iran over the conflict in the Middle East.
Addressing reporters at a White House press briefing, Bessent said he was “optimistic that sometime between June 20 and Sept. 20” the country would see gas prices hit $3 a gallon. Bessent also said it depends on how the US negotiations with Iran over the conflict in the country go.
The treasury chief went on to note that Donald Trump said in an interview that aired on Fox News earlier in the day that the war is “nearing the end,” although the president has made such a statement several times at different points in recent weeks.
Bessent said his counterparts in Middle Eastern countries have told him that they can start pumping oil quickly again once the Strait of Hormuz is open. “We are going to be watching the gas stations because they raised prices very quickly when the crude oil prices went up,” Bessent said. “We hope they’ll bring them down just as quickly as crude oil prices have come down.”
Gas prices reached a high of more than $5 a gallon in 2022 when former President Joe Biden was in office following the start of the war between Russia and Ukraine, according to AAA. But data on retail gasoline prices from the US Energy Information Administration shows the average for a gallon fell to under $4 again in September 2022 and did not surpass that mark again until the conflict in Iran.
