(Radio Iowa) – It may be 2027 before gasoline prices in Iowa fall back to where they were before the war with Iran, according to a University of Iowa professor who’s written about the oil shocks of the 1970s. U-I Professor Tyler Priest teaches a course on U-S Energy Policy and he says President Trump’s statements on social media are major contributors to the swings in the stock market and in crude oil prices.
“We’re in a period of high uncertainty day-to-day. It kind of depends on what Trump says every day and how markets react to it,” Priest says. “There’s a Bloomberg reporter named Javier Blas who calls it Trump’s ‘verbal interventions’ in the oil market.” Gasoline prices in Iowa are the highest they’ve been in nearly four years and Priest predicts they likely won’t fall significantly for many months, even if the war is declared over and the Strait of Hormuz is immediately reopened.
“We don’t know what the status is on the peace talks, the resumption of bombing, the opening of the strait,” Priest says. “Even in the best case scenario, if the strait were opened tomorrow, it would still take probably at least seven months for the resumption of normal crude oil transit.” Analysts and traders are warning that the global oil market is about a month away from a severe supply crunch. Priest says even though the U-S doesn’t buy any of its oil from Iran, the war is causing a massive disruption in oil supplies.
“We’ve lost approximately 10% of the global oil supply, so that affects globally traded oil everywhere,” Priest says. “We hear a lot about how the United States is now energy independent, we produce as much oil as we consume, but we export a lot of oil and we still import quite a bit of oil, I think at least six-million barrels a day.” Most of that imported oil comes from nations like Canada, Mexico and Venezuela. Some media outlets report President Trump’s approval rating is at an all-time low and Priest says the price at the pump is playing a key role in those opinion polls.
“If there’s anything that affects presidential approval ratings or the approval rating of the party in power, it’s gasoline prices,” he says. “Americans do not react kindly to rising gasoline prices because it takes up a large percentage of their disposable income.” Priest’s latest book, “Offshore Oildom,” examines the political significance and controversies over U.S. offshore oil and gas extraction.
According to Triple-A, the average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline was four-21 a gallon on Sunday — that’s a dollar-30 cents higher than a year ago. Iowa’s record high hit in June of 2022, when gas was selling for four-76 ($4.76) a gallon.
