UMD students feel gas pain as prices spike after Iran closes strait

At $4.162 a gallon, regular gas in Maryland is once again taking a direct bite out of University of Maryland budgets in College Park, where students and workers are already weighing every extra trip against their fuel gauge. The state average on April 10 was 66 cents higher than a month earlier and 89 cents above a year ago, a jump that is landing hardest on people who drive to class, work or home across Prince George’s County.

The spike is tied to a wider energy shock after Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. The strait is only 29 nautical miles wide at its narrowest point, and the International Energy Agency says roughly 20 million barrels per day of oil and products moved through it in 2025. The agency also says about one-quarter of the world’s seaborne oil trade transits the chokepoint, along with most of the liquefied natural gas exports from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

That matters because the Strait of Hormuz is one of the most sensitive pressure points in the global oil market. Peter Wien, a University of Maryland history professor who specializes in the Middle East, said the closure is one of the few levers Iran has to affect the United States and Israel, and he described it as destabilizing for the broader region. The U.S. Energy Information Administration says even a temporary disruption there can delay supplies, lift shipping costs and push world energy prices higher. It points to a recent example as well: Brent crude climbed from $69 a barrel on June 12, 2025, to $74 the next day after tensions flared in the region.

For UMD sophomore Raquel Torres, the price surge is already changing daily habits. The criminal justice major said she lives paycheck to paycheck to cover tuition and now has to think harder about every extra drive she makes. She has started cutting down on small trips and spending more time on campus so she does not burn through fuel needlessly.

The broader pressure is showing up beyond College Park. Gas prices across the Central Atlantic rose in early April, and higher fuel costs typically ripple into restaurants, shipping, farming, travel and other parts of the economy. The Bureau of Transportation Statistics has a motor-fuel price release scheduled for May 5, another reminder that the market is still tracking a volatile period for drivers in Maryland and across the country.