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What’s the connection between ethanol, the biofuel produced from corn, and a cherry vanilla ice-cream?

Answer: the first is responsible for pushing up the price of the other.

This month, the price of milk in the United States surged to a near-record in part because of the increasing costs of feeding a dairy herd. The corn feed used to feed cattle has almost doubled in price in a year as demand has grown for the grain to produce ethanol.

Christina Seid, whose family have been making ice-cream at the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory for 28 years, said yesterday that she expected to have to raise her prices, along with all competitors in the short term. “We are holding out as long as we can, but prices will rise,” Ms Seid said.

Amy Green’s Ivanna Cone ice-cream emporium in Lincoln, Nebraska, has already raised its prices for a small cone to $3.50 before tax, up from $2.95 a few months ago. She also estimates that she is paying $150 more a week for the butterfat that she uses in her ice-cream.

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Gas prices are spiking again — to an average of $3.22 a gallon, and close to $4 a gallon in many areas.

And some oil executives are now warning that the current shortages of fuel could become a long-term problem, leading to stubbornly higher prices at the pump.

They point to a surprising culprit: uncertainty created by the government’s push to increase the supply of biofuels like ethanol in coming years.

In his State of the Union address in January, President Bush called for a sharp increase in the use of biofuels, along with some improvement in automobile fuel efficiency to reduce America’s use of gasoline by 20 percent within 10 years. Congress is considering legislation calling for a nearly fivefold increase in the use of ethanol.

That has forced many oil companies to reconsider or scale back their plans for constructing new refinery capacity.

In hearings before Congress last year, oil executives outlined plans to increase fuel production by expanding existing refineries. Those plans would add capacity of 1.6 million to 1.8 million barrels a day over the next five years, for an increase of 10 percent, according to the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association.

But those plans have since been scaled back to more than one million barrels a day, according to the Energy Information Administration, an arm of the federal government.

“If the national policy of the country is to push for dramatic increases in the biofuels industry, this is a disincentive for those making investment decisions on expanding capacity in oil products and refining,” said John D. Hofmeister, the president of the Shell Oil Company. “Industrywide, this will have an impact.”

The concerns were echoed in a recent report by Barclays Capital, which said the uncertainty about the ethanol growth “will do little to accelerate desperately needed investment in complex United States refining units.”

“Indeed, it is likely to deter and further delay investment, if not rule out many refinery investments completely.”

Even so, the current cost of gas — which in real terms is approaching the old peak of $1.42 a gallon in March 1981, or $3.31 adjusted for inflation — has renewed suspicions that the oil industry is looking for ways to keep profits high by delaying much-needed investments. Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, began hearings yesterday on the topic “Is Market Concentration in the U.S. Petroleum Industry Harming Consumers?”

And the House voted yesterday by a narrow margin to penalize any oil companies, traders or retailers found to be charging “unconscionably excessive” prices for gasoline and other fuels. President Bush will probably veto the measure because the White House has said such legislation would amount to price controls.

Experts point to many short-term reasons the United States is running low on gasoline, causing prices to rise: many oil companies are doing maintenance work on refineries; new federal rules make fuels cleaner but costlier; and a string of delays, fires and accidents in the industry have reduced supplies just when drivers are starting to hit the road for summer vacations. Many analysts predict prices will keep rising, then soften later in the summer as demand trails off.

Energy executives dismissed any suggestions that they were intentionally keeping gasoline off the market.

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Toyota’s commitment to hybrid automobiles was on full display Thursday when it unveiled its most expensive gasoline-electric vehicle yet—the $124,000 luxury sedan Lexus LS.

Executives at Japan’s No. 1 automaker are fully convinced that hybrid cars are the way of the future. And they’re betting that growing consumer concern about the environment—and higher gas prices—will lure even wealthy buyers to the new model, which went on sale Thursday in Japan for 15 million yen and will arrive later elsewhere.

Executive Vice President Masatami Takimoto denied hybrids were “a transitional technology” that will be replaced by more advanced ecological technology in the future.

“As long as cars exist, the need for hybrid technology will remain,” Takimoto said.

Toyota Motor Corp., which introduced its first hybrid, the Prius, 10 years ago, sold about 300,000 hybrids worldwide last year, and it plans to sell a million hybrids a year sometime after 2010.

Although all the world’s automakers are working on hybrids, Japan’s No. 1 automaker has dozens of patents on the technology and has sold more hybrids than any other automaker.

The most common hybrids today switch between a gas engine and electric motor to deliver better mileage and reduce emissions that cause global warming.

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