Drivers in Chicago paid an average of $4.879 a gallon for regular gasoline on September 21, up 45.9 cents from the week before. The increase, recorded in the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s weekly survey, was nearly three times the size of the gain posted for the country as a whole that same week. Gas in the city is now $1.413 more expensive than it was a year ago.
Chicago’s price swings tend to run ahead of the national number, and this week was no exception. The city ended up paying more than drivers anywhere else in the Midwest region it belongs to, and more than the national average besides.
A single week that added 46 cents
According to the EIA’s Gasoline and Diesel Fuel Update, Chicago’s regular-gasoline average climbed from $4.420 a gallon on September 14 to $4.879 on September 21, a jump of 45.9 cents. Nationally, the comparable increase that week was 15.9 cents, meaning Chicago’s one-week move was roughly three times steeper than the country’s.
The size of the jump puts Chicago among the more volatile metro readings EIA tracks. A single week rarely moves a metro average by more than a small handful of cents; a move approaching half a dollar stands out even against a year that has already seen national prices climbing.
Inside the kit: The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit covers the different kinds of property-tax freezes and exemptions, the circuit-breaker credit that includes renters, and heating and cooling assistance for a home — the fixed costs that keep coming due no matter what a single week does at the pump. The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit lays out each one along with an application log.
How Chicago compares with its own region
The EIA survey also tracks a broader Midwest region, designated PADD 2, which includes Illinois and surrounding states. That regional average stood at $4.386 a gallon on September 21 — itself up sharply, by 29.5 cents, from the week before, but still 49.3 cents below Chicago’s price. Chicago is not just running ahead of the national number; it is running well ahead of the wider Midwest region it sits inside.
The national average that week, drawn from every region EIA surveys, was $4.478 a gallon. That places Chicago 40.1 cents above the country as a whole, a gap that has widened compared with a year ago, when Chicago’s $3.466 average sat only about 29 cents above the then-national price of $3.173.
Where Chicago sits among the rest of the country
Chicago’s $4.879 average is high, but it is not the nation’s highest. California, at $6.003 a gallon the same week, remains the most expensive place in EIA’s survey for regular gasoline, followed by the broader West Coast region at $5.600. The Gulf Coast, by contrast, averaged just $3.972 — meaning drivers there paid roughly 91 cents less than the national figure while Chicago paid more than 40 cents above it. The spread between the cheapest and most expensive regions EIA tracks was more than $2 a gallon that week.
A year of increases in one city
Chicago’s gasoline price has risen from $3.466 a gallon a year ago to $4.879 now, an increase of $1.413, or more than 40%. That outpaces the national year-over-year gain of $1.305 that EIA’s separate weekly regular-gasoline history shows for the same period, and it has happened in a city where prices are already known for moving faster and further than the national average during periods of rising costs.
The jump also landed in the same week that on-highway diesel set an all-time national high of $6.529 a gallon, according to EIA’s diesel price history dating back to 1994 — a sign the pressure showing up at Chicago’s gas pumps was not isolated to gasoline alone. EIA does not publish a single explanation for why one metro area moves more than others in a given week; its survey reports the prices, not the cause. The agency’s next weekly release, covering data through September 28, is scheduled for September 29, which will show whether Chicago’s jump was a one-week spike or the start of a longer climb.
What a 46-cent jump leaves out of the budget
A single week’s 46-cent increase at the pump is the kind of cost a household sees immediately at the gas station sign, while a property-tax bill or a utility charge can climb by a similar amount over months without ever showing up somewhere as visible. That difference in visibility is often the whole reason a relief program goes unclaimed — nothing about a rising fixed cost prompts a household to go looking for it the way a gas price does.
The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit brings together property-tax freezes and exemptions and heating and cooling assistance, plus a renewal calendar for tracking each deadline.
Look up the relief options in The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources.
