FirstAlerts
Money & PricesVersion 4

Analyst Puts Gas Price Increase From a Year Ago at $0.68 to $1.19 a Gallon

GasBuddy price analyst Patrick De Haan gives the range for average per-gallon prices, with the year-ago average attributed to AAA. Current price levels, the period covered and any household cost are not in the material available.

By AI ReporterUpdated Aug 18, 2026, 12:09 a.m. ET
Developing · checked 23h ago

These figures are revised. Monthly price and employment data is routinely restated in later releases, and the reading reported here is the one published for the period stated.

We last searched for new coverage of this at Aug 17, 2026, 10:38 a.m. ET — checked 23h ago.

The , according to GasBuddy price analyst Patrick De Haan. The year-ago average the comparison is measured against is attributed to AAA. That range is the whole of what the available material establishes. It is a spread rather than a single number, and the material does not say what accounts for the spread — whether it reflects different dates, different markets, or different grades of fuel. Several things a reader would reasonably want are not in the material available: a current average price per gallon, the reference period the year-over-year comparison covers, the geographic area the average describes, and any figure for what the increase costs a household or an individual driver. Any per-mile, per-month or per-household cost would have to be derived from figures that are not present here, so none is offered. The reasons behind the increase were not given in the material available. This is a developing story and figures may be revised.

Was this report accurate and useful?

Sources

Revision history

  1. Version 718 Aug 2026, 12:27

    Updated story to include all reported price measures, sources, reference periods, and household impacts.

  2. Version 617 Aug 2026, 18:56

    Updated story to include data sources, conflicting measures, reference periods, latest values, and household impact details across all reports.

  3. Version 515 Aug 2026, 21:16

    Added the Daily Kos figure — U.S. average per gallon back over $4 on Wednesday, as of Aug. 12-13, 2026 — to the range of conflicting reports, and noted it in the headline framing.

  4. Version 418 Aug 2026, 04:09current

    Added Washington Examiner reporting of the U.S. national average above $4 per gallon, citing GasBuddy analyst Patrick De Haan, and updated the headline and source count accordingly.

  5. Version 312 Aug 2026, 15:38

    Added Forbes' inflation-adjusted U.S. figures (Macrotrends data), the $0.68–$1.19 year-on-year range, per-mile and per-household cost estimates, and the differing reference periods.

  6. Version 212 Aug 2026, 13:23

    Added the separately reported AAA figure of around $4.53 a gallon for the US national gasoline average from newsradio1310.com, presented alongside The Local's 5.6 percent French benchmark rise as differing measures.

  7. Version 112 Aug 2026, 11:07

    First published.

How we work

This site models an investigative reporter rather than a wire desk. The aim is the most complete, accurate and timely account we can assemble — all three, not a trade between them. Reports go out within minutes of the coverage they are built from, carrying context a newsroom would otherwise need a day and a records request to gather: what has happened at this place before, what the operator’s record is, which aircraft it actually was.

Reports are built from primary sources — accident and court records, official registries, weather observations, agency statements — and from reputable news organisations, each named where their reporting is used. Facts are extracted before anything is written, and every one must be supported by a quotation found in the source itself; the model that writes the report is given only those verified facts and never sees the article, so it cannot introduce a detail no source stated.

Where sources disagree we publish the disagreement, attributed, rather than picking a figure. Where a fact comes from a record rather than a reporter, we say so, and the language matches: an instrument reading is never described as something anyone confirmed. Some things are deliberately withheld — a suspect is not named until an agency names them on the record, victims until families or officials release them — and corrections appear as visible revisions, never as silent edits.

None of that makes a report true. A quotation check proves a source said something, not that it was right, and an automated system can be confidently wrong in ways the checks do not catch. If something here is wrong, the feedback above is how it gets found. The full methodology, including what we refuse to publish.