To understand why oil prices are high today, you have to go back two years, to the early days of the pandemic.
Oil prices hit the floor in April 2020. In fact, they fell right through the floor. For a while, oil producers had to pay companies to take oil off their hands. One day, the price in Kansas even hit a negative $47 a barrel.
Some small oil companies went under. In Kansas alone, companies took almost 5,000 wells off-line and production plummeted.