COLUMBUS — Drivers across central Ohio have grown used to a strange pattern at the pump: prices shoot up overnight, then slip back down a few cents at a time over the following days. Analysts call it price cycling, and it explains why Ohio gas can climb even when costs are falling nearly everywhere else.
Last week, Ohio was one of just three states where prices rose, even as the national average dipped below $4 a gallon for the first time since mid-April, according to GasBuddy. Columbus-area stations averaged $4.17, up 6.4 cents on the week but still $1.07 higher than a year ago.
In a price-cycling state, stations raise prices sharply and in unison, then undercut one another in small steps until the price bottoms out and the cycle starts over. The spikes are sudden. The declines are slow.
It can look suspicious, but price cycling isn't price fixing. Price fixing is illegal. It happens when competing businesses secretly agree to set prices at a certain level, robbing customers of real competition. Price cycling involves no agreement at all. Each station watches what its neighbors are charging and reacts on its own, raising prices when it sees others do the same and cutting them to win back drivers. The stations are responding to one another, not conspiring with one another, and that legal line, an agreement versus independent reaction, is what separates the two.
Patrick De Haan, head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, said a few price-cycling states saw averages jump before rejoining the broader slide. He pointed to the Strait of Hormuz as the next big factor, saying reopened oil flows would signal whether the relief holds.
For now, drivers can expect the same up-and-down rhythm to continue.