I think you can see where Andrew Tobias is going, when he writes:

President Bush is an oil man. His pappy is an oil man. His VP is an oil man. His pals and his family’s pals are oil men. His virtual brother, Prince Bandar “Bush,” and the Saudi Royal Family generally, to whom the Bushes are closely tied, are oil men.

So when you say “energy crisis,” what exactly do you mean? This is a great time to be an oil man! All those guests at the early Cheney energy meetings — the ones whose names the White House would not reveal even after a subpoena from the General Accounting Office? Most of them are likely reveling in this so-called “crisis.”

The solution to the “crisis,” according to this administration, is to drill for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, not to promote conservation. Drilling for oil is what oil men DO. Conservation hurts oil men two ways. First, they sell less oil. Second, because of that lessened demand, the oil they do sell fetches a lower price.

With oil at $55 a barrel instead of $30, as I have pointed out before, the Saudis are making (roughly) an extra $250 million — extra! — a day.

Read the whole thing.  Eye-opening.