A social media post showing gas being sold for $9.99 per gallon in Ohio was in fact due to the station running low on fuel, Newsweek has learned, rather than the Buckeye State suffering particularly acute effects of the Iran war. Gas prices have soared nationwide since the launch of the war on February 28, with average prices climbing around 50 percent over this period to $4.48 as of Sunday, per AAA. As well as further pressure on struggling consumers, this has created a significant political hurdle for Donald Trump’s party—already facing an uphill battle in this year’s elections.
The post on X, viewed over 770,000 times as of Sunday, appears to show that drivers in rural Ohio were feeling this surge far more than the average American—the fuel price display boards reading $6.89 for diesel and $9.99 for regular gas. This would mean the station was selling gas at over twice the average both nationwide and in Ohio—$4.53 on Sunday—and at a higher price than diesel despite the latter being around $2 more expensive elsewhere. Newsweek has contacted the poster, Tom Renz, an Ohio-based lawyer and political pundit, through his website for comment.
Prices in Ohio have increased significantly since the beginning of the Iran war, a product of the ongoing closure of the Strait of Hormuz which has been compounded by other factors like Russia and Ukraine exchanging attacks on energy facilities in recent weeks. The statewide average for regular unleaded has risen from $2.76 in the days before the first joint U.S.-Israeli strikes of Operation Epic Fury on February 28 to now $4.53 a gallon—a 64 percent increase. However, the photos posted on Saturday do not show that gas was being sold at the station in Ohio for $9.99 on Saturday.
As well as the station itself, one of the photos in the post shows a road sign pointing to Genoa (8 miles) and Elmore (3 miles), indicating that the photo was taken in Ottawa County, Ohio. According to GasBuddy, reported prices for these two villages were $4.57 and $4.89 per gallon on Saturday, respectively. In a follow-up post on X, after many questioned the disparity between statewide average prices and this particular station, the original poster wrote that he took the pictures “off the Ohio turnpike exit near Elmore, Ohio.” Using these details, Newsweek was able to locate the station which features in the post: a Sunoco at 4541 US-20, Gibsonburg, OH 43431, United States.
On Sunday morning, Google Maps lists the station’s 24-hour average prices as $4.50 per gallon for regular gas, $5.30 for premium and $6.90 for diesel. When contacted on Sunday, an employee of the gas station said that the reason the display read $9.99 instead of a price in this range was because the tank itself was empty. Individual stations can run low on gas for several reasons, such as a spike in local demand, inventory mismanagement or delivery delays.
And a similar strategy was adopted by stations in 2021 following the Colonial Pipeline hack which cut off supplies of fuel to much of the East Coast, according to reporting from at the time. Amid reports of gas stations in California showing maxing out at $9.99 for diesel, Patrick De Haan, GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis, told the news outlet Straight Arrow that this was also due to the displays’ three-digit limit. If it is because the gas station was out of gas, why is that happening?
Extract — continue reading at the source.
