COLUMBUS, Ohio — Thanksgiving travel just got a little cheaper for Ohio drivers. Some Ohio stations are already reporting $2.99 a gallon, according to fuel price tracker GasBuddy, as the state’s average price keeps sliding ahead of the holiday, the Columbus Dispatch reports.
Ohio’s average price per gallon currently sits at $3.63, according to AAA figures cited by the Dispatch. That is down six cents from November 11 to November 12, down 34 cents from a week ago, and nearly 60 cents below the national average — a rare stretch of relief in a year when Ohio prices flirted with $4.99 in some places, the Dispatch reports.
The Columbus metro area is tracking the state almost exactly. The metro average dropped a little over six cents from November 11 to November 12 to $3.64, according to AAA, after sitting at $4.01 on November 5, the Dispatch reports. For a family driving across the state for Thanksgiving, the two-week slide adds up to real money in the tank.
The relief arrives in the second month of Ohio’s gas tax holiday, which began October 4 and is set to run until January 4, 2027. During the holiday the state has removed its 38.5-cent tax on every gallon of gasoline and 47 cents on diesel, the Dispatch reports — savings the law passed last summer requires sellers to pass on to customers.
Not everyone is convinced the holiday is doing the work. Roughly 200 Ohioans have filed complaints with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office claiming the tax holiday was not working as intended, many saying they saw only a few cents of savings instead of the nearly 40-cent drop they expected, according to the Dispatch.
Economists quoted in the Dispatch’s reporting urge drivers not to read that gap as wrongdoing. Matthew S. Lewis, a professor of economics at Clemson University, told the Columbus Dispatch that other forces — oil costs tied to the war in Iran, refinery problems and the seasonal switch to cheaper winter-blend fuel — move pump prices at the same time, and that without the holiday, prices would likely show the same highs with an extra 38 cents on top.
The Strait of Hormuz, the key oil waterway bordered by Iran, remains part of the math, the Dispatch reports: reserves, refinery outages and the waterway’s status all feed into what Ohio stations pay before a gallon ever reaches a local pump. That is why a state tax change and the market’s own slide can arrive together and be hard to separate at the sign on the corner.
Diesel drivers have felt the squeeze longest. The average diesel price in Ohio broke records in 2026, reaching $6.81 on September 22, and stood at $6.19 on November 12, according to the figures cited by the Dispatch. Gasoline, by contrast, has not broken Ohio’s 2022 record — $5.07 a gallon in the first months after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — even as 2026 prices came close, the Dispatch reports.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on: We know the statewide average is $3.63 and falling, some stations are at $2.99, and the tax holiday runs through January 4. What is still unclear is how much of the recent drop belongs to the holiday itself and how much to winter blend and oil markets — the question behind those 200 complaints to the Attorney General, and one lawmakers are still debating, according to the Dispatch.
For related coverage of what getting around Columbus costs right now, see our reporting on free C-Pass bus rides for downtown Columbus workers ending December 31 and on Columbus weighing another water rate increase ahead of a November 23 vote.
The federal numbers tell the same story on a weekly clock. Regular gasoline averaged $3.77 a gallon in Ohio in the week of November 9, down 32.2 cents from the week before, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s weekly retail figures. That EIA average runs higher than AAA’s daily $3.63 reading because it captures the earlier, pricier part of the slide — two rulers, one direction: down.
What happens next is the Thanksgiving travel rush itself: prices will be tested by holiday demand through the end of November, and the tax holiday’s January 4 end date is the next fixed point on the calendar. Drivers who spot a sub-$3 sign this week are, by the trackers’ own numbers, catching the cheapest Ohio fuel of the fall.