South Texas Is Paying the Price At the Pump and the Register

You can't not drive in Alice. Or Beeville. Or Rockport. There's no bus route to work, no transit option to the doctor, no way to get through a week in rural South Texas without burning fuel. Which is why a war 6,000 miles away hits this part of the state harder than most.

Why Gas Is So Expensive in South Texas Right Now

When the U.S.-Israel war with Iran broke out, South Texas families felt the price change at the pump almost immediately. The reason: Iran controls access to the Strait of Hormuz — the narrow chokepoint through which roughly one in five barrels of the world's oil must pass every day. With that route destabilized, crude crossed $100/barrel. The pre-war national average of $2.98/gallon is gone.

A 20-gallon fill-up in Alice, Beeville, Rockport, and Sinton now costs roughly $14 more than it did before the fighting started. Fill up once a week and that's over $55 more a month. For families who drive long distances to reach work, school, or a doctor's office, the meter runs higher still.

What That Means at the Grocery Store

In communities like this, there's no shopping around. In Alice and Beeville, most families count on H-E-B or Walmart to stretch the budget — and in Beeville, the H-E-B is often the only real option. In Rockport and Sinton, the choices get even thinner. Wherever families shop, ground beef is $6.90/lb, milk around $3.68/gallon, and eggs are $3.93/dozen. The reason mirrors what's happening at the pump: when it costs more to truck food to rural areas, those costs land on the shelf, and the war's effect on oil is what drove trucking costs up.

In rural South Texas, that double hit is especially hard to absorb. You're often driving farther just to reach a store, which means spending more on gas to buy groceries that cost more because of gas. There's no workaround — just $14 extra at the pump and a higher total at checkout, week after week.

Tariffs Make the Grocery Bill Even Harder to Navigate

South Texas sits at the edge of a border that moves an enormous amount of food into the U.S. — and the 25% tariffs applied to Mexican imports hit that supply chain directly. Avocados, tomatoes, peppers, onions, limes, cucumbers — much of the fresh produce sold at H-E-B and Walmart in Alice, Beeville, and Rockport crosses through Mexico. The tariff gets paid at the border and passed along through the supply chain until it lands on the shelf price.

For communities in this part of Texas that already have limited grocery options and less room to absorb increases, tariffs add a layer that can't be avoided. You can't comparison-shop the tariff — it's in the price no matter which store you're in. Combined with the fuel costs driving up delivery, the pressure on household budgets here is coming from more than one direction at once.