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The reasons for the high fuel prices are more complicated than you might think, said Bob White, who until his recent retirement was Indiana Farm Bureau’s director of national government relations and resident expert on fuel prices.

“The first reason is that while you can't blame everything on COVID, this is one thing that you can,” White said. The pandemic shut down travel in the U.S. and the rest of the world, drastically reducing the demand for petroleum and causing refineries to significantly reduce production.

“This was not only gasoline and diesel fuel, it also was jet fuel – the airlines saw a significant drop in passengers,” noted White.

But even though people are beginning to travel again, U.S. refineries have been slow to ramp up production as they wait to see what major suppliers OPEC and Iran will do.

This means the supply is low and the demand is high, and that translates into higher prices, even if nothing else was affecting the market, White said.

But of course something else is affecting that market: War.

“The U.S. only imports 3% of its oil from Russia,” White said, and it doesn’t import much from Ukraine, either.

No matter what market you're in – corn, soybeans, wheat, oil, natural gas, copper, lead – that market likes things to be calm and steady.

“The markets don't like chaos. And when you've got a war going, in a country as natural resource-rich as Ukraine, that creates chaos in the market,” White added.

One thing that could make a difference is year-round E15, noted Andy Tauer, INFB’s executive director of public policy. On April 12, President Biden announced that he will temporarily allow E15 gasoline – gasoline that uses a 15% ethanol blend, the sale of which is in some states banned from June to September – to be sold this summer. This will relieve a little bit of the pressure on the petroleum markets.

“In Indiana, 45% of our corn production goes to ethanol. So that is an important measure for us, too,” Tauer added.