Brent crude fell roughly 15 percent on Tuesday's ceasefire announcement. The gas price at your local station did not. [1]

The lag between crude oil prices and retail gasoline prices runs three to four weeks. The gas you are buying this week was priced against crude contracts settled in mid-to-late March, when Brent was above $100. The ceasefire announcement affects the futures markets now. It affects your pump price in early to mid-May, assuming the ceasefire holds, Hormuz genuinely reopens, and refinery throughput restores to pre-war levels. Each of those is a conditional. [2]

The practical timeline: if the ceasefire holds through April 22, Hormuz physically reopens in the next week, and tankers begin clearing the strait, wholesale gasoline futures should decline meaningfully by late April. Retail pump prices typically follow wholesale by two to three weeks. A driver filling up on May 5 to May 10 is the realistic earliest point at which a sustained ceasefire translates to visible pump relief — and only if conditions hold. [1]

Trump's stated goal of $2.00-per-gallon gasoline is arithmetically possible if Brent falls below $70 and stays there. A 14-day ceasefire, even if followed by a permanent agreement, does not produce $70 Brent in the short term. The war premium erases fast; the infrastructure damage to Kharg Island and South Pars production capacity takes months to reverse. [2]

The realistic outcome is prices in the high $3 range by late May. That is better than $4.50. It is not $2.00.

-- NORA WHITFIELD, Chicago