- In EIA's official long-range reference case, national average gasoline prices are projected to fall in inflation-adjusted terms from $3.18/gallon in 2025 to about $2.77/gallon by 2030, a 12.8% real decline, before drifting only gradually from there.
- In current (nominal) dollars, EIA projects gasoline averaging $2.95 to $3.09/gallon every year from 2026 through 2030, not a dramatic move in either direction from 2025's $3.18 nominal average.
- Looking all the way out to 2050, EIA's reference case does not project real gasoline prices ever climbing back above their 2025 level at any point in the 25-year outlook.
- This is a different EIA product than the shorter-term, monthly-updated forecast covered in this site's 2026–2027 forecast article, and the two currently show different numbers for the overlapping years, a real, disclosed discrepancy between two official government forecasts, explained in Section 05.
01 Introduction: A Different Kind of Forecast
Every year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration publishes the Annual Energy Outlook (AEO): a long-range projection of U.S. energy markets built on its National Energy Modeling System, running all the way out to 2050. This is a fundamentally different product from the monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) already covered elsewhere on this site, it is published once a year, not monthly, and it is designed to show long-run structural trends rather than next quarter's price swing. The AEO2026 edition, released April 8, 2026, includes a central "Counterfactual Baseline" case (what EIA called the "Reference case" in prior years) built on laws and regulations in place as of December 2025, plus ten alternative side cases that vary specific assumptions. The tables and charts use the Counterfactual Baseline case, which EIA describes as a baseline, or experimental control, for exploring long-term trends rather than a prediction of the most likely path.
U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2026, Case Descriptions (April 2026); Annual Energy Outlook 2026, Release Presentation (April 8, 2026).02 The 2026–2030 Forecast
EIA's Counterfactual Baseline case projects the following retail gasoline prices for the transportation sector, in both nominal (current-year) dollars and real (inflation-adjusted, constant 2025) dollars:
U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2026, Table 12: Petroleum and Other Liquids Prices ("Transportation," Motor Gasoline).| Year | Nominal $/gal | Real (2025$) $/gal |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | $3.18 | $3.18 |
| 2026 | $3.07 | $2.98 |
| 2027 | $2.96 | $2.83 |
| 2028 | $2.95 | $2.76 |
| 2029 | $2.99 | $2.74 |
| 2030 | $3.09 | $2.77 |
Estimate your vehicle's driving cost using official EPA fuel economy data.
Use the Calculator03 The Longer View: Real Prices Through 2050
Because the AEO looks all the way out to 2050, it's possible to check whether the 2026–2030 dip is temporary or part of a longer pattern. It's the latter. In real, inflation-adjusted terms, EIA's Counterfactual Baseline case never projects gasoline prices returning to their 2025 level at any point in the next 25 years.
U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2026, Table 12: Petroleum and Other Liquids Prices ("Transportation," Motor Gasoline), full 2025–2050 series.| Year | Real (2025$) $/gal | vs. 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | $3.18 | n/a |
| 2030 | $2.77 | −12.8% |
| 2035 | $2.75 | −13.6% |
| 2040 | $2.42 | −23.8% |
| 2045 | $2.42 | −24.0% |
| 2049 (low point) | $2.38 | −25.2% |
| 2050 | $2.41 | −24.1% |
Over the full 2025–2050 window, EIA's own compound annual growth rate for this series is −1.1% per year in real terms, a slow, steady decline, not a spike or a rebound. In nominal dollars, the same series grows at +0.9% per year, which is why the price you'd actually pay does eventually rise on paper (to about $3.98/gallon nominal by 2050) even though its real purchasing-power cost is projected to be lower than today's.
U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2026, Table 12, "Avg Annual Change 2025-2050" column (EIA's own published compound annual growth rate, not calculated by this site).04 What's Driving the Outlook
Two forces sit behind this projection. The first is crude oil. EIA's Counterfactual Baseline assumes Brent crude oil averages $87 per barrel (real 2025 dollars) by 2050, with a bumpy path getting there, including a real-dollar dip to $53/barrel in 2026 before a gradual, uneven climb.
U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2026, Table 12: Petroleum and Other Liquids Prices ("Crude Oil Prices," Brent Spot, real 2025 dollars per barrel).| Year | Brent Spot (2025$/bbl) |
|---|---|
| 2025 | $68.76 |
| 2026 | $53.45 |
| 2027 | $58.92 |
| 2028 | $63.00 |
| 2029 | $65.62 |
| 2030 | $67.17 |
| 2050 | $86.93 |
The second force is demand. In all 11 AEO2026 cases, total U.S. motor gasoline consumption is lower in 2050 than in 2025 (16.5 quadrillion Btu in 2025; 8.8 in the Counterfactual Baseline). The Counterfactual Baseline includes the vehicle tailpipe greenhouse gas standards, and it projects electric vehicles (the "Electric" category of the light-duty stock table) growing from 5.6 million vehicles, 2.1% of the light-duty fleet, in 2025 to 40% of the fleet in 2045 and 46% in 2050. In the Alternative Transportation case, which removes the most recent tailpipe standards, 2050 gasoline consumption is 13.0 quadrillion Btu instead of 8.8. Fewer gallons demanded is part of why this case does not project rising real prices.
U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2026 (Data/AEO2026.zip): Energy Use, Total, Motor Gasoline (quadrillion Btu) for each case; Light-Duty Vehicle Stock, Electric, divided by Total Vehicle Stock, Counterfactual Baseline; Case Descriptions (April 2026), Alternative Transportation.05 How This Compares to the Short-Term Forecast on This Site
This site also publishes a separate article, U.S. Gasoline Price Forecast, 2026–2027, built on EIA's monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO) rather than the AEO. As of its September 2026 edition, that forecast shows 2026 averaging $3.84/gallon and 2027 averaging $3.35/gallon, both nominal figures higher than this article's AEO-based $3.07 (2026) and $2.96 (2027).
Comparison of U.S. Energy Information Administration, Short-Term Energy Outlook, September 2026, Table 2, versus Annual Energy Outlook 2026, Table 12.06 How Much Uncertainty Is Baked In
EIA does not publish the Counterfactual Baseline as a single guaranteed outcome. Alongside it, AEO2026 includes ten side cases that vary specific assumptions: Low and High Economic Growth, Low and High Oil and Gas Supply, Low and High Zero-carbon Technology Cost, Alternative Electricity, Alternative Transportation, a combination of the two Alternative cases, and High Electricity Demand. Each shows how the model responds when a single input, GDP growth, drilling productivity, EV policy, and so on, is pushed higher or lower than the baseline assumption.
U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2026, Case Descriptions, "Summary of Cases."07 Methodology and Caveats
Every figure in this article comes from EIA's Annual Energy Outlook 2026 (the Counterfactual Baseline case, plus the ten side cases in Section 06), with light calculation (percentages, differences) added and disclosed throughout.
U.S. Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2026 (released April 8, 2026).- This is a long-range structural forecast, not a short-term prediction. It is designed to show multi-decade trends under stated policy and technology assumptions, not to call next quarter's price the way the STEO-based forecast on this site attempts to.
- The AEO is published once a year. This article is built on the April 2026 (AEO2026) edition. EIA typically releases a new edition each spring; a newer AEO2027 release should supersede the figures here.
- The tables and charts show the Counterfactual Baseline case. Section 06 gives the range across the ten side cases, using EIA's all-sector price series, which is slightly different from the Transportation-sector series used for the tables.
- "Real" and "nominal" are both EIA-published figures from the same source table, not independently modeled by this site; the constant-dollar year is 2025.
- The consumption and electric-vehicle figures in Section 04 are computed from EIA's AEO2026 data file: the electric-vehicle share is the Electric light-duty vehicle stock divided by the total light-duty vehicle stock.
08 Data Sources
Every figure in this article comes from a U.S. government source. No proprietary, estimated, or third-party data was used.
- U.S. Energy Information Administration. Annual Energy Outlook 2026, Counterfactual Baseline case (datekey d021826b, released April 8, 2026). Table 12 (Petroleum and Other Liquids Prices), full year-by-year data tables. eia.gov/outlooks/aeo
- U.S. Energy Information Administration. Annual Energy Outlook 2026: Case Descriptions (April 2026).
- U.S. Energy Information Administration. Annual Energy Outlook 2026, Release Presentation (April 8, 2026).