Money & Power

Your electricity bill, the price at the pump, the chips in your phone and the companies behind them. Every story starts with what it costs you or what you own.

Live prices

The numbers behind the stories, updating while you read.

Regular

$4.30 per gallon

= $0.00 vs yesterday
▼ $0.06 vs a week ago
▲ $1.26 vs a year ago
New all-time high
$0.72 below the record
Record: $5.02 on Jun 14, 2022, during Russia's invasion of Ukraine
Before the Iran strikes: $5.02 on Jun 14, 2022, during Russia's invasion of Ukraine
Read why

Diesel

$6.32 per gallon

= $0.00 vs yesterday
▲ $0.05 vs a week ago
▲ $2.69 vs a year ago
New all-time high
$0.21 below the record
Record: $6.53 on Sep 22, 2026
Before the Iran strikes: $5.82 on Jun 19, 2022, during Russia's invasion of Ukraine
Read why

Chart and history

Diesel premium over regular: $2.02 a year ago it was $0.59
Since the strikes on Iran began (Feb 28, 2026): Regular ▲ $1.39Diesel ▲ $2.37
Since Inauguration Day (Jan 20, 2025): Regular ▲ $1.22Diesel ▲ $2.46

Show the numbers

	Date	Regular	Diesel
Today	Oct 19, 2026	$4.30	$6.32
Yesterday	Oct 18, 2026	$4.30	$6.32
A week ago	Oct 12, 2026	$4.36	$6.27
A month ago		$4.48	$6.49
A year ago		$3.04	$3.63
Latest EIA weekly survey	Oct 12, 2026	$4.33	$6.18
Last survey before the Iran strikes	Feb 23, 2026	$2.94	$3.81
Inauguration Day	Jan 20, 2025	$3.11	$3.72

What would an EV save you?

AAA daily national average, price as of October 19, 2026, refreshed every morning.
Chart and since-dates: US Energy Information Administration weekly survey, week of October 12, 2026.

US city average, residential

19.6¢ per kWh

▲ 0.8¢ vs Sep 2025
New all-time high
0.2¢ below the record
Record: 19.8¢ in June 2026
Read why

Chart and history

Since Inauguration Day (January 2025): ▲ 1.7¢ from 17.9¢

Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI average price data, electricity per kWh, US city average, data through September 2026.

Colored by distance from the US average; the middle shade is within 15¢.

AAA state averages, prices as of October 19, 2026, refreshed every morning.

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude, per gallon
Wholesale gasoline, Gulf Coast
US pump average, regular

Per gallon, week of Oct 12, 2026

Crude oil $2.35
Refining and wholesale $1.09
Taxes, delivery and the station $0.89
At the pump $4.33

Crude is WTI divided by 42, the gallons in a barrel. Wholesale is the Gulf Coast spot price and the pump figure is the US average, so prices where you live will differ.

Sources: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) spot prices (daily, one business day behind) · EIA weekly pump price survey (Mondays).

Your state

Home heating oil

$6.14 per gallon

▲ $2.60 vs the same week a year ago

week of Oct 12, 2026

Home propane

$2.64 per gallon

▲ $0.22 vs the same week a year ago

week of Oct 12, 2026

Natural gas, wholesale

$3.22 per MMBtu

▲ $0.39 vs a year ago

Oct 14, 2026

Natural gas is the Henry Hub spot price in Louisiana, the main US wholesale benchmark, in dollars per million British thermal units (MMBtu). It is a wholesale price, not what your utility charges.

Wholesale heating oil in New York Harbor: $4.83 a gallon on Oct 14, 2026 (▲ $2.73 vs a year ago).

Sources: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) heating oil and propane survey (weekly, October to March) · EIA Henry Hub spot price (daily) · EIA spot prices.

A snow-covered house at night in a blizzard, its electric meter on the side wall glowing red-hot and throwing sparks as the icicles around it melt into steam

Sep 25, 2026 • 21 min read

Why Your Electric Bill Spikes in Winter, and How to Cut It

The average US home paid about $133 for electricity in October 2025 and about $175 in January 2026, by a calculation from EIA utility data, and the price per kilowatt-hour fell in most states over those months. On average the jump is usage, not price: homes that heat with electricity, space heaters and longer nights of lighting, with the furnace's blower fan and electric water heaters as other winter loads. EIA's October 2026 forecast has homes that heat with electricity paying about 4% more this winter than last. Here are the state numbers, the forecast by region, what the common plug-in culprits cost a month, and the cheap ways to stay warm: blankets and layers, heating only the rooms you use, thermostat setbacks, finding drafts with a borrowed thermal camera and sealing them, wood heat done safely, frozen-pipe prevention, and help paying the bill.

#Electric Bills #Home Heating #Heat Pumps

Read Article →

A Gulf Coast refinery worker in a hard hat sits on the lid of an overflowing white fuel storage tank as diesel oozes out around him, with more full tanks and an idle tanker ship at the dock behind him.

Sep 23, 2026 • 10 min read

A 90-Day Diesel Export Ban Would Fill Gulf Tanks in 24 Days

Diesel averaged a record $6.529 a gallon on September 21, and Washington is arguing over whether to stop exporting it. An estimate built from EIA storage data gives the Gulf Coast room for about 24 days of stranded exports. After that, refiners must cut runs or reshuffle what they make.

#Diesel #Gas Prices #EIA

A silver-haired man in a suit sits aghast in a barber chair as the barber, who was asked for a trim, calmly combs his hair up into an absurd two-foot pompadour instead.

Sep 16, 2026 • 12 min read

Trump Picked Warsh to Cut Rates. Warsh Raised Them Instead

The Federal Reserve raised its benchmark rate a quarter point on September 16 to a range of 3.75% to 4%, its first increase since 2023, in a unanimous vote under the chair Trump chose to bring rates down. Credit cards and home equity lines reprice within a billing cycle. The Fed did it with core CPI at its lowest since 2021, and its own forecast pencils in one more hike this year.

#Federal Reserve #Interest Rates #Kevin Warsh

A truck driver at a truck-stop fuel island holding a diesel nozzle into a supermarket shopping cart full of groceries instead of her semi's tank, deadpan, at dusk.

Sep 10, 2026 • 5 min read

Diesel Just Hit a Record. Here's Why Your Groceries Care.

The EIA's weekly survey put US diesel at $5.967 a gallon for the week of September 7, above the June 2022 record of $5.810. Regular gasoline is $4.157 and nowhere near its own record. Diesel moves nearly everything you buy, so the gap between the two fuels is the number to watch.

#Diesel #Gas Prices #EIA

Two uniformed arms gripping the same rusted pipeline valve wheel above a narrow strait where oil tankers sit idle at anchor

Aug 17, 2026 • 7 min read

The Iran Ceasefire Expired. The Hormuz Blockade Didn't.

The 60-day US-Iran memorandum lapsed on August 17 with no final deal and no formal talks. Iran told Reuters it will go "fully offensive" unless the June terms are implemented within weeks, Trump threatened to bomb Oman, and the Strait of Hormuz saw three tankers in a day against 130 before the war.

#Iran War #Strait of Hormuz #oil prices

Four people strain to hold shut a bulging basement vault door as arcs of electricity burst through its seams

Aug 3, 2026 • 10 min read

The Cap on 67 Million Power Bills Ends Next May

The grid auction that feeds 67 million American power bills just maxed out its legal price cap for the third time in a row, and the grid operator's own math puts the real price 71% higher. The cap has one auction left before it expires.

#PJM #electricity prices #Data Centers

A technology executive proudly gestures at a towering mountain of green cash that is revealed from the side to be a thin flat cardboard stage prop, propped up with nothing behind it, on a bare data-center floor.

Jul 23, 2026 • 7 min read

Big Tech's $176B Profit That Isn't Really There

Alphabet's revenue rose 24 percent last quarter while its depreciation bill jumped 42 percent and its free cash flow went negative. The gap between reported profit and real cash comes down to one accounting choice: how long a company pretends its AI chips will last. Michael Burry estimates that choice hides roughly 176 billion dollars of overstated profit across Big Tech.

#Depreciation #AI Capex #Alphabet

A fully loaded crude oil supertanker sits stranded at dusk in a narrow sea strait, blocked from open water by a giant rusted chain-and-boom barrier stretched across its path, the dark sea sheened with oil.

Jul 23, 2026 • 7 min read

$100 Oil Is Back, and Saudi's Escape Route Just Closed

Brent crude topped $100 on July 23 after Houthi missiles hit two Saudi tankers in the Red Sea. The twist: that water is the exact route Saudi Arabia built to escape the Strait of Hormuz, and it just moved more than 4 million barrels a day into it. Both of the kingdom's export doors are now contested at once.

#Iran War #Oil #Strait of Hormuz

An exhausted shopkeeper shrugs at a huge queue of customers outside a shop with completely empty shelves

Jul 21, 2026 • 15 min read

The Free AI That Crashed Chip Stocks Just Sold Out

Kimi K3 knocked the chip index into a bear market on the promise of free weights. Three days later its maker stopped taking customers because it ran out of compute. The selloff and the sellout cannot both be right.

#Kimi K3 #AI Bubble #Semiconductors

A Gulf resident holds a glass of water up to the light in a darkened kitchen while smoke rises from a coastal power plant visible through the window behind him.

Jul 19, 2026 • 11 min read

Qatar War-Gamed a Reactor Strike. Its Water Lasted 3 Days.

Iran struck two Kuwaiti power-and-desalination plants in 24 hours while satellite images revealed fresh strike damage inside Iran's own Bushehr nuclear complex. Six countries drink from the sea this war keeps hitting, and their stored reserves are measured in days.

#Iran War #Desalination #Nuclear Energy

Officials ceremonially padlock ornate iron gates across a rural road while a convoy of trucks hauling gray server modules rolls past through the open gap beside the fence, the lead driver waving.

Jul 18, 2026 • 9 min read

New York's Data Center Ban Has a 30-Megawatt Loophole

New York became the first state to freeze large data center construction on July 14. The executive order covers facilities of 50 megawatts and up. The bill the legislature passed a month earlier starts at 20 megawatts and includes the one tool that would actually touch your electric bill. Hochul signed the pause and left the tool on the table.

#Data Centers #Energy Policy #AI

A customer holds out cash at a gleaming new bank branch, but the teller window is a seamless pane of glass with no slot to accept it.

Jul 10, 2026 • 12 min read

America's New Banks Can't Legally Take Your Deposit

The OCC is approving "bank" charters at a record pace, but a national trust bank cannot take your deposits, make loans, or carry FDIC insurance. Here is what the label actually buys, what happens when the ledger behind an app breaks, and how to check where your money really sits.

#Banking #Fintech #Stablecoins

An auction gavel resting on a supercomputer rack while a hurricane fills the monitors behind it

Jul 10, 2026 • 12 min read

Trump Wants Weather Without Climate. The Code Says No.

The White House ordered NSF to strip climate research out of NCAR and keep the weather work. The government's own budget documents, a federal judge, and 40 years of forecasting code say the two cannot be separated.

#NCAR #Weather Forecasting #Climate Policy

A white rocket crashed nose-first into the marble floor of a Wall Street trading room while analysts at their desks calmly keep working, red market charts glowing on the wall behind them

Jul 8, 2026 • 10 min read

The Street Says $8T. SpaceX Just Hit an All-Time Low.

SpaceX joined the Nasdaq-100 on July 7, forcing index funds to buy it. The next morning SPCX hit an all-time low. Morgan Stanley says the stock is worth up to $8 trillion; Morningstar says $62. The gap is the whole story.

#SpaceX #SPCX #Nasdaq-100

A hand in a suit sleeve turning a large industrial oil-pipeline valve to the closed position on an export jetty, a laden supertanker and the Strait of Hormuz behind at dusk.

Jul 8, 2026 • 9 min read

Trump Gave Iran an Oil License, Then Killed It in 15 Days

On June 22, the US Treasury quietly made buying Iranian crude legal through August 21. Fifteen days later it revoked the license. The paperwork tells a colder story than the ceasefire headlines: the deal was a supply valve, opened to crush a wartime oil premium and shut the moment the price fell.

#Iran #Oil Sanctions #OFAC

A vast idled aluminum smelter interior at dusk, rusting industrial hall lit by a single hard shaft of light through a broken roof, rows of dark server racks being wheeled in among the dead pot lines, documentary photojournalistic style, shot on a 35mm prime.

Jul 8, 2026 • 9 min read

Bitcoin Miners Are Quietly Becoming AI's Landlords

A dead Kentucky aluminum smelter, idled in 2022 because electricity got too expensive, just became the site of a 20-year, $19 billion AI lease with Anthropic. Its new owner is a Bitcoin miner. Across the sector, miners have signed tens of billions of dollars in AI hosting deals, not because they learned to build AI, but because they already own the one thing money cannot buy fast: an energized grid connection. Here is how weakness got repriced as scarcity, and where the real risk hides.

#Bitcoin Miners #TeraWulf #Anthropic

A memory chip foundry executive holding out a small tin cup under a towering stack of cash, editorial photojournalism

Jul 7, 2026 • 10 min read

The AI Boom's Biggest Winner Just Asked for $28 Billion

SK Hynix just earned a full year of record profit in a single quarter, then filed to raise the same amount again on Nasdaq. The filing explains why, and what the buyer is really inheriting.

#SK Hynix #HBM #IPO

A single computer memory chip on one pan of a brass balance scale outweighing a towering pile of hundred-dollar bills on the other pan, on a trading desk

Jul 2, 2026 • 14 min read

The Mag 7 Lost $2.3 Trillion. Chip Stocks Doubled.

The Magnificent Seven erased 2.3 trillion dollars of market value in June while the semiconductor index posted the best first half in its recorded history. Both trades price the same capex dollars, and they point in opposite directions.

#Analysis #Magnificent 7 #Semiconductors

A single oversized memory chip balanced on a thin pedestal casting a long shadow over a city skyline at dusk

Jun 26, 2026 • 9 min read

Two Chips Are Half of Korea's Market. Then It Crashed.

South Korea's stock market fell 10 percent in a single session while the Nasdaq lost barely 2. The reason is a concentration bet that turned an entire economy into a leveraged wager on AI memory chips.

#Analysis #KOSPI #Semiconductors

A Western diplomat in a dark suit slides an ornate case across a mahogany table toward a seated Iranian official inside a gilded hall at the Palace of Versailles, as a Persian Gulf oil terminal burns through the tall arched windows behind them

Jun 18, 2026 • 9 min read

America Bombed Iran for a Month, Then Greenlit $300 Billion

The United States went to war to end Iran's nuclear program. The deal it signed on June 17 commits to lifting every sanction, clears the way for at least $300 billion to rebuild Iran, and leaves that program standing. The decision was not made on the battlefield. It was made in the oil market, where a closed Strait of Hormuz threatened to drag the West into recession.

#Iran #Strait of Hormuz #Oil Shock

A SpaceX-style rocket on a stock exchange floor with its payload fairing open, revealing glowing AI server racks inside

Jun 12, 2026 • 11 min read

Wall Street's Biggest IPO Ever Isn't a Rocket Company

SpaceX hit the Nasdaq on June 12, 2026 after pricing the largest IPO in history: $75 billion at $135 per share. The prospectus describes a company where Starlink pays the bills, rockets are a fifth of revenue, and the new money is pointed at AI compute.

#SpaceX #IPO #SPCX

A pristine bank vault door standing slightly ajar in a dim marble lobby, with a thin red emergency tag hanging from its handle, documentary photojournalistic style

Jun 10, 2026 • 6 min read

Blackstone's Bad Loans Went 0.6% to 4.7% in 90 Days

Blackstone Secured Lending entered 2026 with 0.6% of its loans on non-accrual. Ninety days later the figure was 4.7%, an almost eightfold jump that Moody's answered by cutting the fund's outlook to negative. The trigger was a Thoma Bravo software company. The backdrop is a record 6% private credit default rate and a Fed that war inflation will not let cut.

#Private Credit #Blackstone #BXSL

An extreme close-up of a green semiconductor chip resting on a stack of blank legal paper, two fountain pens and ink wells slightly out of focus behind it, dim warm chiaroscuro lighting, documentary photojournalistic style.

Jun 2, 2026 • 11 min read

Anthropic Borrowed $36B. Broadcom Cosigned $31B of It.

Apollo and Blackstone are syndicating a $36 billion private credit deal so a shell company can buy Google TPUs and lease them to Anthropic. The senior tranches only price at investment grade because Broadcom, which co-builds the chips, has agreed to pay the shortfall if Anthropic defaults. A near-trillion dollar startup still needs the chip maker to cosign its debt.

#Anthropic #Broadcom #Apollo Global

A gas station price sign in front of a Gulf Coast oil refinery under an approaching hurricane sky, late afternoon golden hour, photojournalistic documentary style, shot on 35mm f1.4

Jun 1, 2026 • 6 min read

Three Calendars Just Synced. All of Them Break Trump.

Hurricane season opens today. Summer driving demand is climbing toward the July 4 peak. OPEC+ meets in six days. Each of those calendars is normally managed by a buffer of spare crude, full strategic stocks, and a stable refinery fleet. In June 2026, every one of those buffers is severely depleted. The IEA puts Middle East spare capacity at a record-low 320,000 barrels a day. The SPR has been drawn by 17.5 million barrels since March. Saudi Arabia's OPEC quota for June is 10.291 million barrels per day. Its actual March production was 7.76 million. The shock absorbers are running on fumes before the demand season starts.

#Iran War #Hurricane Season #OPEC