Are big Wall Street investors and multinational oil companies to blame for high oil prices—and by extension, for expensive gasoline? The answer, experts say, is both yes and no. A number of influences exert pressure on crude, an asset that's prone to dramatic price fluctuations. Geopolitics are the primary cause of oil price swings, though growth expectations, central bank policy and fuel exports are also major factors that come into play.



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Fadel Gheit, energy analyst at Oppenheimer, said in an email to CNBC that geopolitical factors such as turmoil in Libya and Ukraine are the main factors buttressing oil and gas prices. Still, "the entire energy complex is elevated by $20 per barrel, purely on speculation," Gheit said.

However esoteric the factors, they matter because of the spillover effect on retail gas, which is tightly linked to the price of Brent crude. With retail gasoline recently hovering uncomfortably close to $4 a gallon in some places, it acts as a de facto tax on consumers and dampens economic growth. Frothy oil and gas prices in the context of an underwhelming recovery have bedeviled many economists. "We're still in the great recession, in Europe and the U.S.," said Steve H. Hanke, professor of applied economics at The Johns Hopkins University and a scholar at the Libertarian Cato Institute. "My expectation has been for some time that energy prices should be going south, but they haven't." Read MoreJobs vs. GDP: Which is it?

Don't forget the effect of exports