US petrol prices have fallen for a 13th straight day, with the national average for regular petrol at $4.04 on Saturday — the first time the price has moved this low in weeks, and the latest leg of a slide driven by collapsing oil prices.
The AAA national average stood at $4.0371 on November 7, down from $4.0688 on November 6 and $4.1003 on November 5. A week ago it was about $4.20, and a month ago about $4.37. A year ago, the average was $3.08 — so drivers are still paying more than a dollar more per gallon than last autumn.
AAA said on November 5 that the average had fallen 12 cents in a single week, as crude oil dipped into the high-$80s to low-$90s a barrel. Before 2026, the national average had never gone above $4 in November at all.
The cheapest and dearest states
The gap between states is wide. California remains the most expensive at $5.84 a gallon, while North Carolina is the cheapest at $3.34 — helped by a gas-tax holiday that suspended the state’s 41-cent-per-gallon tax from October 10 to November 30 under the Relief at the Pump Act. In Asheville, the average is about $3.51.
Analysts expect the national average to fall below $4 next week. GasBuddy’s Patrick De Haan said so in comments reported on November 6, and Gulf Oil’s Tom Kloza expects it within about 10 days. Diesel, meanwhile, is averaging about $6.23 a gallon.
Why prices are falling
The driver is crude oil. Brent settled at $98.32 a barrel on Friday after losing about 16% in a week — its steepest weekly fall since the start of Covid — as hopes of a US-Iran deal removed the war premium that had pushed prices above $117. Cheaper crude takes time to reach the pump, but the direction is now firmly down.
For households heading into Thanksgiving, the timing helps: the holiday is the busiest driving period of the year, and every 10 cents off a gallon saves the average driver real money over a long weekend trip. The cheapest petrol in the country is in North Carolina at $3.34 a gallon, thanks to a gas-tax holiday that runs until November 30, while California remains the dearest at $5.84. Diesel, used by most trucks and many larger vehicles, is averaging about $6.23 a gallon — a cost that feeds through to the price of almost everything delivered by road.
