and we can't embed CNN's video player, so you'll have to go over there and watch Kunstler's well-done piece on Glenn Beck if you haven't seen it already:

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/bestoftv/2008/05/14/beck.life.oil.cnn?iref=videosearch

And, yes, under the fold, if you can believe it, yes, that's your president doing his best Dr. Evil (from Austin Powers) impression. No, I am not kidding.

Last night, on ABC's Nightline, Terry Moran interviewed President Bush in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, during his trip to the Middle East. When discussing what President Bush might say to the King of Saudi Arabia to lower oil prices, George Bush said:

If they don't have a lot of additional oil to put on the market, it is hard to ask somebody to do something they may not be able to do.

If Saudi Arabia doesn't have a much additional oil to put on the market, the veracity of what Saudi Arabia has been saying about extra capacity is brought into question. More importantly, it starts raising questions about Saudi Arabia's true long-term oil production capability. Can Saudi Arabia really ramp up oil production in the future? Are the high reserves posted by Saudi Arabia and other Middle-Eastern countries really indicative of high future production capability?

The interview with George W. Bush can be seen at this link. The above quote is about 1:55 into the interview.

This is a link to a Press Release we did with respect to this story. Feel free to link to it in your Blogs.

Q Thanks. Mr. President, what do you say to people who are losing patience with gas prices at $3 a gallon? And how much of a political price do you think you're paying for that right now?

THE PRESIDENT: I've been talking about gas prices ever since they got high, starting with this -- look, I understand gas prices are like a hidden tax. Not a hidden tax, it's a tax -- it's taking money out of people's pockets. I know that. All the more reason for us to diversify away from crude oil. That's not going to happen overnight. We passed law that encouraged consumption through different purchasing habits, like hybrid vehicles

-- you buy a hybrid, you get a tax credit. We've encouraged the spread of ethanol as an alternative to crude oil. We have asked for Congress to pass regulatory relief so we can build more refineries to increase the supply of gasoline, hopefully taking the pressure off of price.

And so the strategy is to recognize that dependency upon crude oil is -- in a global market affects us economically here at home, and therefore, we need to diversify away as quickly as possible.

At the same time Darwinian and Totoneila draw attention to the strange case of the Shrinking Refinery. Apparently the BP Refinery at Texas City, which pre-hurricanes had a capacity of 460,000 bd, will no longer produce at more than 300,000 bd.

WaPo article can be found here. (This continues a theme of his we've discussed a few times here at TOD).