Something tells me Abdullah will tell him to go pound sand……

In April 1986, Vice President George H.W. Bush traveled to Saudi Arabia with a stern warning. Record low oil prices of $10 a barrel threatened the U.S. oil industry and U.S. national security. If prices don’t rise, he warned, perhaps a U.S. tariff on imported oil would do the job.

More than 22 years later, his son George W. Bush is on a similar mission, but with the opposite goal in mind. President Bush meets Friday with Saudi King Abdullah and will lobby for help in bringing down world oil prices, which have raced past $125 a barrel.

Then and now, the Saudis are the only oil power with enough unused production capacity to make a difference on price if they increase supply. But the hard fact is that the world oil market has changed, and Saudi Arabia is far from the only producer holding the fate of U.S. consumers in its hands. Even if the Saudis increase production, shortfalls elsewhere, along with rising global demand, can offset their efforts - and are.

Many Americans grumbling at the gas pump are quick to blame the Saudis for their woes - just as many might be surprised to learn that Saudi Arabia trails Canada and Mexico as the chief suppliers of foreign oil to the United States and isn’t far ahead of Venezuela, Nigeria and Angola. In 2006, Saudi Arabia provided only 14 percent of U.S. oil imports. Still, if it boosted production significantly, added world supplies would tend to drive global oil prices down, regardless of who bought their exports.

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