At a meeting Monday at his Texas ranch, Bush is promising to press Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, to do more to help ease global oil prices.

Still, the president acknowledges that there is little that he or Congress can do to quickly lower gasoline prices, which have climbed past $2.20 a gallon nationwide.

Critics also claim that Bush's energy bill does little to promote conservation or alternate energy approaches, and that he has done little of the lobbying of oil-country leaders that he promised during in his first presidential campaign. ...

Crude oil prices have risen 40 percent in the past year. But finding ways to curb them pose a particular dilemma for Bush — complicated by his own actions.

The war in Iraq, for instance, limited Bush's influence among Persian Gulf oil-producing nations.

The president recently ruled out releasing oil from the nation's emergency stockpile, saying he would only tap the 700 million barrel reserve in a national crisis.

Ponder this: Next year, the administration will phase out the $2,000 tax credit for buying a hybrid vehicle, which gets over 50 miles per gallon, but will leave in place the $25,000 tax write-off for a Hummer, which gets 10-12 mpg. That's truly crazy, and that's truly what the whole Cheney energy policy is.

According to the Energy Information Administration in the Department of Energy, last year's energy bill (same as this one) would cost taxpayers at least $31 billion, do nothing about the projected over-80 percent increase in America's imports of foreign oil by 2025 and increase gasoline prices. (Since every bureaucrat who tells the truth in this administration - about the cost of the drug bill or the safety of Vioxx - seems to get the ax, I'm probably getting those folks in trouble.) ...

Nor are the major oil companies spending their mammoth profits on exploration or field development - they're doing mega-mergers and stock buybacks. ExxonMobil spent $9.95 billion to buy back its own stock in 2004. The Chinese and the Indians are now buying cars like mad, and the result is going to be an enormous supply crunch, sooner rather than later.

It is possible with existing technology to build a car that gets 500 miles per gallon, but the Bushies won't even raise the CAF[E] (fuel efficiency) standards for cars coming out now. The trouble with the Bush plan to develop hydrogen cars is that while you can get hydrogen out of water, you have to put energy in to get it out, so there's a net energy loss.