The American Automobile Association's national gasoline average fell to $4.491 a gallon Tuesday, down 6.1 cents from the $4.552 Memorial Day peak Friday and the first decline-from-the-pump in the war-second-order-effects ledger since the Strait of Hormuz closure spike began in late March [1]. California led the country at $6.109; Mississippi held the lowest state average at $4.013 [1]. The 6.1-cent move is small. The direction is the first new direction in nine weeks.

The paper's Monday standard on the $4.55 hold and the TSA Friday count framed the question that the Memorial Day weekend would either confirm a ceiling on the pump-price spike or push through it. The Tuesday print confirmed a ceiling at $4.56. The drop also coincides with Iran's Tasnim news agency reporting Sunday that 32 vessels cleared the Strait of Hormuz over the weekend — the first three-figure-percentage uptick in shipping movement since the early-April collapse the paper has tracked since week one of the war. Brent crude opened London Tuesday near $96 a barrel, down 6% from Friday's close above $102.

The pump-side mechanics lag the crude tape by about ten days under normal conditions and longer when refiners are running short crack spreads. Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, told Axios Friday that more than nine-tenths of the year-over-year pump-price gap was attributable to the Iran war [2]. De Haan's framing matters because it gives a published baseline against which to read any pullback: a 90% war-attribution holds the spike accountable to events at sea. A Tuesday $4.49 from a $4.56 Friday, with Brent down six percent, leaves the war-attribution number intact but creates the first measurable through-flow from the kinetic and the geopolitical into household budgets.

California is the noisy case. The $6.109 state average Tuesday is down 3.7 cents from Friday's $6.146; the relative drop is smaller than the national, reflecting California's structural premium plus the state's heavier inventory exposure to West Coast crude flows and ARB-spec gasoline blending that does not respond as quickly to imported barrels. Washington at $5.782 and Hawaii at $5.668 are the next-highest states. The seven states above $5.00 — California, Washington, Hawaii, Oregon, Alaska, Nevada, and Illinois — represent roughly 22% of national gasoline demand by volume and a smaller share of vehicle-miles given the larger California cohort drives less per capita than the national average.

The futures tape is what allows the prediction. WTI June settled Friday at $96.40 and opened Tuesday at $90.85 on the resumption-of-shipping headline. Brent's term structure flattened modestly; the spot-versus-back contract differential narrowed about 40 cents, indicating traders pricing some restoration of supply. The OPEC+ June 1 production meeting, which the paper has tracked weekly since April 22, is now landing into a market that has begun to price an Iran-deal scenario in the futures curve. A reversal — Hormuz re-closes, the deal stalls, the Tuesday print does not extend Wednesday — would push the curve back. A continuation — EIA Wednesday morning's crude stocks number prints a build, gasoline stocks rise, the AAA print Wednesday shows another 2 cents off — confirms the structural read.

What the household-side data show is also new. AAA's Memorial Day forecast of 45 million travelers — up from 44.8 million a year ago — held through the weekend, with the TSA on Friday clearing 2.96 million screenings. The 6.1-cent drop on the back of confirmed peak-demand-met-by-resuming-supply is the first time pump and travel volume have moved consistent with restored normal price discovery. The $22 million per hour De Haan calculated for the Memorial Day weekend additional fuel cost is, for now, the running tally. Tuesday morning, it stopped accruing at the national pace and started subtracting [3].

Refiner positioning is the next data point. Two majors — Marathon and Phillips 66 — kept summer crack-spread guidance flat at their April 30 and May 1 calls; if either walks that back in early June, it confirms the refiners have begun to price the de-escalation. Conoco's PADD III messaging stayed unchanged Monday. The Gulf Coast crack spread tightened about $1.20 a barrel from Wednesday through Monday, an indicator consistent with refiners expecting cheaper crude inputs into late June. Refiner CapEx commentary will move with the Iran deal, not against it.

The state-level dispersion is the indicator that matters for the household read. California $6.11, Mississippi $4.01 — a $2.10 dispersion that exceeds any 2022 comparison and reflects regional refinery diversity and pipeline geography more than national supply conditions. A national-average drop of 6.1 cents averaged across that dispersion means meaningful pump relief is asymmetric: New England drivers see it before Pacific Northwest drivers; Gulf states see it earliest. The single-day household savings nationally on a 6.1-cent move is roughly $61 million across a 400-million-gallon retail demand day. The number is small. It is also the first negative number the household-side ledger has produced in five weeks. Whether Wednesday extends it is the watch.

-- DARA OSEI, London