The US-Iran war is three months old, the Strait of Hormuz is closed, and the national average gasoline price sits at $4.55 — up $1.50 from pre-war levels. President Trump has promised prices will fall "very substantially" and "very rapidly" once hostilities end. Energy analysts uniformly disagree. The structural reality: gas prices shoot up like a rocket and come down like a feather. The chokepoint is physical, not financial. About 25% of the world's seaborne crude-oil trade — roughly 20 million barrels per day — transits the Strait of Hormuz, according to the International Energy Agency. That oil is currently off the global market. Even if the strait reopened tomorrow, repositioning the very large crude carriers (VLCCs) that haul 2 million barrels apiece at 13 knots — about 14 mph, or as Denton Cinquegrana of Dow Jones Energy puts it, "basically riding a bicycle on water" — would take three to five weeks just for logistics. The pipeline from crude oil to pump has its own clock. Turning a barrel of oil into fuel normally takes 30 to 60 days, says David Ruisard of Argus Media. That covers extraction, transport to refinery, processing, and distribution. Gulf wells use traditional pumping methods that restart more slowly than US shale operations. Refineries need time to heat up. Port infrastructure may be damaged — nobody knows the condition of wells, refineries, and ports in the Persian Gulf. Cinquegrana's base case: minimum recovery time equals the duration of the conflict. If the war ends by late June — about 18 weeks of hostilities — expect at least 18 weeks of unwinding. Ruisard puts the industry estimate range at six months to two years for full normalization, even with an immediate ceasefire. Patrick De Haan of GasBuddy says if Hormuz reopened tomorrow, the summer national average might land in the mid-to-upper $3 range; if it stays closed, prices creep toward $5 and potentially surpass records. Not all fuels recover at the same speed. Jet fuel could normalize sooner because airlines can cut flights, drop routes, and manage demand — Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary noted on May 18 that fewer passengers were booking due to costs, easing European jet-fuel pressure. Gasoline could normalize faster than diesel because US diesel production has been structurally tight for years. Meanwhile, summer driving season is arriving: AAA projects 45 million Americans will travel 50+ miles over Memorial Day weekend, potentially setting a record despite $4.55 gas. The post-war demand picture adds another layer. Countries that drained strategic reserves during the conflict — Pakistan, India, South Korea, Japan — will need to replenish them, keeping demand elevated even after supply resumes. Some may build new reserves specifically to buffer against future Hormuz closures. This restocking demand competes directly with consumer recovery. The asymmetry is the story. A geopolitical shock can remove 20 million barrels per day from markets in a single decision. Restoring that supply requires undamaged infrastructure, restarted wells, heated refineries, repositioned tankers, cleared port backlogs, and rebuilt inventories — each with its own timeline, none of which responds to presidential promises. The war premium, similar to the one embedded during the second Gulf War under George W. Bush, doesn't lift cleanly. The Russia-Ukraine war is the closest recent analog, but even there, Russian production never went to zero. Hormuz is a harder shock with a longer tail.
