Bad news first: The average price for gasoline in Columbus has hit $4.96 a gallon.
The good news, maybe? GasBuddy, the website and app that tracks prices around the country, predicts they’ll start to ease before the end of the weekend.
“If you don’t need a full tank, don’t fill up,” Patrick De Haan, the site’s head of petroleum analysis, wrote on X at 1:24 p.m. on May 1. His gas price prediction read: “There is good news for beleaguered drivers in the Great Lakes (MI/IN/OH/IL/WI) on what comes NEXT: gas prices this weekend will ease, wholesale gasoline and diesel prices down considerably.”
It hadn’t happened as of mid-morning May 2. GasBuddy’s search engine showed the average price in Columbus among the highest for the nation’s biggest cities. Columbus ranks 15th in population, but its $4.96-a-gallon average price for gas was the fifth highest among those cities.
Columbus drivers are paying more than people in New York ($4.40 per gallon), Phoenix ($4.84), Philadelphia ($4.47), Charlotte ($4.02) and all the big cities in Texas, where gas remains under $4 per gallon.
Gas was more expensive in Los Angeles, San Diego and San Jose, California, where prices have topped $6.10 per gallon. In Chicago, prices averaged $5.07 on May 2.
While De Haan predicted an imminent easing of prices in Ohio and other Great Lakes states — he didn’t offer insight into how much they might drop, though — other experts have said high prices are here for the foreseeable future. The U.S. war in Iran has caused damage and destruction to the Middle East’s oil infrastructure, they told USA TODAY.
Some of it “will take years and years to rebuild,” Kate Gordon, CEO of California Forward, a nonprofit that advocates for sustainability, told the newspaper April 30.
AAA, which listed the average national price of gasoline at $4.43 per gallon on May 2, had Ohio’s statewide average 46 cents higher at $4.89 per gallon of regular unleaded gas. AAA’s figures showed Ohio’s average gas price was up 6 cents from the day before, up 92 cents from a week ago, $1.14 higher than the beginning of April and $1.71 higher than one year ago.
Average prices in central Ohio on May 2 ranged from $4.87 per gallon in Fairfield County to $4.97 per gallon in Licking County, according to AAA. GasBuddy showed prices averaging $4.90 in Cleveland, $4.86 in Cincinnati, $4.92 in Toledo, $4.95 in Akron and $4.94 in Dayton.
Follow Bob Vitale on Instagram at @dispatchdining. You can reach him directly at rvitale@dispatch.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: When will gas prices drop? Columbus hovers near $5 as expert predicts relief
Reporting by Bob Vitale, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
