US gas prices Labor Day 2026 have hit an all-time high for the holiday weekend, with the national average for regular petrol reaching $4.14 per gallon on Sunday, according to AAA, a 38% rise since before the US attacked Iran in February. US Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright, appearing on the Sunday morning news circuit, argued that the end of summer driving season will pull prices back, even as the conflict that triggered the spike shows no sign of ending.
US Gas Prices at Labor Day: A Record Nobody Wanted
AAA was direct about the historical context. ‘The national average has never been above $4 per gallon on Labor Day. The current Labor Day record is $3.82, set on September 3, 2012,’ the organisation said. The $4.14 reading on Sunday also represents a 4-cent increase from late August alone, as tanker strikes between the US and Iran continued over the weekend.
The price surge traces directly to the Strait of Hormuz. When Iran effectively closed the strait in response to the US strike in February, it severed a chokepoint through which a fifth of the globe’s oil and liquefied natural gas had been flowing. Brent crude closed at $95.52 a barrel on Friday, compared with $72.48 the day before the war began. Jet fuel followed oil upward, pushing up air travel costs alongside pump prices.
‘As we pass Labor Day tomorrow, you’ll start to see demand decline as we move out of summer driving season,’ Wright said on ABC’s ‘This Week’. Asked about the broader trajectory, he added: ‘If I had to guess, they’re more likely to go down than go up.’
The Venezuela Deal and What It Actually Involves
Wright also pointed to the Trump administration’s agreement to secure 65 billion barrels of oil reserves from Venezuela as a longer-term lever on prices. President Donald Trump said in August on Truth Social that the deal would ‘substantially’ lower gas prices, though analysts cautioned the timeline could stretch given Venezuela’s underdeveloped oil infrastructure.
The structural details of that arrangement go considerably further than a simple supply agreement. According to ABC News 4, Venezuelan authorities granted a century of access to 17 oil fields to North American Blue Energy Partners, described as the second-largest private Venezuelan oil producer. The Department of Defense’s Office of Strategic Capital has been granted a 35% equity stake in the resulting joint venture, and the State Department holds the right to purchase 20% of the oil at cost, with right of first refusal on the remaining 80%.
Wright was directly involved in formalising those arrangements on the ground. The US Department of Energy states that on 2 September 2026, Wright travelled to Venezuela to oversee the signing of landmark energy agreements with Chevron, Eni, and GE Vernova. That trip came just four days before his Labor Day media appearances in which he cited the deal as part of the administration’s case for falling prices ahead.
On CNN’s ‘State of the Union’, Wright added that the Trump administration has also eased rules for US refiners, allowing them to produce more gasoline, a near-term measure that does not depend on Venezuelan output reaching market.
Midterm Politics and the Pump
The cost of living, including US gas prices at Labor Day and through the summer, has become a central political issue for the Trump administration ahead of the midterm elections. Bringing consumer prices down was a core promise during the president’s campaign, and the gap between that pledge and the current $4.14 average is a visible one for American drivers.
Whether the seasonal demand decline Wright is counting on will be enough to move the needle materially depends partly on whether the Strait of Hormuz situation stabilises. With the US and Iran trading tanker strikes as recently as this past weekend, the supply-side pressure that drove prices to a Labor Day record has not gone away. The Venezuela deal’s full production impact, analysts noted, will take time to materialise given infrastructure constraints, leaving the end of summer driving season as the most immediate variable in play.