Several of Mr. Bush's top advisers, including Vice-President Dick Cheney and chief of staff Andrew Card, spent most of their careers in the business. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice is a former director of ChevronTexaco Corp. Mr. Bryce pointed out that higher prices don't just boost industry prices. They also create the financial conditions that are likely to spur more oil and gas development in the United States, and elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the surge in oil prices has also revived interest in a massive energy bill that has been stalled in U.S. Congress for months.
Mr. Bush has said that if the Democrats were sincere about getting gasoline prices down, they would stop blocking the bill and allow oil drilling in Alaska's pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR).
The reality is a little more complicated. The bill's ANWR measure was stripped out of the legislation months ago because it had no chance of winning Senate approval.
Instead, negotiators for the Senate and the House of Representatives remain hung up in a squabble between the defenders of two competing fuel additives -- ethanol, a crop-based alcohol, and MTBE, a controversial chemical favoured by the refining industry.
Political analysts say the legislation has almost no chance of passing before the election