The average American household has paid an additional $659.01 for gasoline and diesel since the Iran War began pushing prices higher on February 28, 2026, according to a tally from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Nationwide, the total comes to more than $88.1 billion funneled into the oil industry in just over six months, and ITEP says the tab is still climbing. Retirees living on a fixed Social Security check feel the increase twice — once at the pump, again in the delivery costs baked into everyday prices. ITEP projects the household total will reach $964.29 by the end of fall if current prices hold.
How ITEP Tracked the Iran War’s Fuel Costs
ITEP built the tracker by comparing actual pump prices since February 28, 2026 — the date it identifies as the start of the Iran War — against a counterfactual baseline of what gasoline and diesel would have cost had prices followed their normal seasonal pattern. That baseline is derived from the average week-to-week price change recorded in the same calendar weeks over the prior ten years, with 2020 excluded because of pandemic-related distortions. The gap between the counterfactual and the actual price trend is what ITEP counts as the added cost of the war.
The group attributes $88,134,342,822 in additional fuel spending nationwide to date to individuals, businesses, and federal, state and local governments combined since the war began. Jet fuel and home heating oil are excluded even though both have also grown more expensive because of the conflict, which means the true toll of the war on household energy budgets runs higher than the published numbers show. National totals also include civilian and military government fuel purchases from Department of Energy and Defense data, unlike the state-level breakdowns, which rely on Federal Highway Administration figures.
ITEP describes itself as a non-profit, non-partisan research organization focused on federal, state and local tax policy, and the fuel-cost tracker is its own economic modeling rather than an official government accounting. No federal agency has published a comparable running total of war-related fuel costs; ITEP’s estimate is built from public data sets — mainly the Energy Information Administration, the Federal Highway Administration and the Census Bureau — but the conclusions, including the counterfactual pricing assumptions, are the organization’s own. The tracker updates daily as new EIA price data becomes available, which is why the household and national totals shown on the page change from one day to the next rather than representing a single point-in-time estimate.
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What the Government’s Own Price Data Shows
Independent of ITEP’s modeling, the Energy Information Administration’s most recent weekly survey put the national average price of regular gasoline at $4.071 a gallon and on-highway diesel at $5.599 a gallon for the week ending August 31, 2026 — increases of 89.4 cents and $1.865, respectively, from the same week a year earlier. Those figures come from the government’s own retail price survey, not from ITEP, and they confirm that pump prices have climbed well beyond a typical year-to-year change during the months ITEP’s tracker covers.
Prices vary sharply by region, which is one reason ITEP builds separate estimates for the eight Petroleum Administration for Defense Districts the government uses to track fuel markets. EIA’s same August 31 survey showed West Coast regular gasoline averaging $5.206 a gallon against $3.618 on the Gulf Coast, and West Coast diesel at $6.497 against $5.360 on the Gulf Coast — gaps of more than a dollar and a half a gallon that mean the added burden ITEP calculates for a retiree in the Pacific Northwest looks very different from the burden calculated for one in Texas or Louisiana.
Why the Fall Forecast Isn’t a Fixed Number
ITEP’s tool also breaks down who ultimately bears the cost. Of every $100 the war has added to fuel bills, the group calculates that only about half is paid directly by individuals at the pump; the remainder falls on businesses, trucking companies and state and local governments, whose higher fuel bills do not simply disappear. That share resurfaces as higher grocery and retail prices, thinner business margins, or reduced local government services, meaning a retiree who drives little can still absorb a meaningful part of the war’s cost through everyday purchases.
That trajectory is what drives ITEP’s forward-looking number. The group projects the per-household total will climb from $659.01 to $964.29 by the end of fall, but that figure is explicitly a projection, not a recorded expense — it assumes the current gap between actual and seasonally expected prices holds steady through the season rather than narrowing or widening. ITEP notes its forecasts update as new price data comes in, so the fall number is a moving estimate rather than a fixed total.
The tracker’s household calculator lets a reader select a state and household size to see a more specific number than the $659.01 national average, and ITEP separately flags Thanksgiving travel as a period when the added cost accelerates further. For someone living on a Social Security check that adjusts once a year, an unplanned jump in a recurring expense like fuel is different from an unexpected one-time bill — it compounds every week gas is purchased, without a corresponding increase in income until the next annual adjustment takes effect.
Whether the $964.29 forecast proves accurate depends on factors outside ITEP’s model — how long the war continues, whether OPEC or U.S. refiners adjust output, and whether diplomatic developments ease the price pressure before winter heating season adds a new set of costs the tracker does not even count. What is already fixed, according to ITEP’s own figures, is the $88.1 billion already paid and the $659.01 already spent by the average household since February. Those numbers do not depend on what happens next; they are the record of six months already priced into paychecks, pensions and Social Security checks that were not built to absorb them.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by The Money Overview editorial team.
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