NEWTON - The price of oil hit a new record Wednesday at $124 a barrel. Everyone knows that's shooting up the price of gas and diesel fuel.

It's also driving up the cost of everything that uses oil, like asphalt. Asphalt is a mix of 5% petroleum and 95% rocks. The price of asphalt has nearly doubled in the last four years.

With budgets stretched tight in American cities, they realize they can't escape every price increase. And they can't ignore crumbling streets, which makes a two-fold increase in asphalt prices hard to handle.

With asphalt prices directly linked to crude oil prices, there's no telling how high they'll go.

"We know it won't be status quo ahead, so we're know we're going to have to invest some money to work in the future," said Chris Williams, Project Researcher at Iowa State University.

In the search for renewable energy in Iowa, corn comes to mind with Ethanol. But at the Iowa Energy Center's pilot plant in Nevada, they're not using corn kernels. Instead, they're using corn stalks, switch grass and other bio-mass. It's normally material that never gets used.

In a matter of minutes the process takes corn stalks like, adds a lot of heat and produces a byproducts much like tar. Then, Williams found if they take the moisture out of it, that material can become asphalt.

That gooey stuff is just one part of what comes out of making bio-oil.

Williams said refineries are looking for more ways to get more fuel out of a barrel. Therefore oil used for asphalt is in shorter supply.

The material Williams is researching would be added to stretch the shrinking supply.

"The more you work with it, a little bit you realize it some some similar properties to asphalt, the more you work with it the more it becomes a reality," said assistant researcher Ryan Shropshire.

The trick is finding a good way to harvest this new asphalt.

Researchers say it's simple logistics, and that answer is just a matter of time.

Williams said contractors could get their first look at the product in two years.

And, Williams added, the price of asphalt could drop even more if engineers find a way to use this new material to completely replace oil in asphalt, which he said is in the works.

Email Justin Foss at Justin.Foss@kcrg.com