chicagotribune.com
By Mark Silva

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - Regular gasoline goes for less than 50 cents a gallon here in the capital of the world’s largest producer of oil, pumping out nine million barrels a day.

But, after a visit with the Saudi monarch here, President George W. Bush has found little hope of bringing any significant relief back home, where Americans are paying close to $4 a gallon.

…. for the second time in five months, the Saudis have rebuffed the Bush administration’s request for significantly stepped-up oil production to ease rising oil prices. The Saudi oil minister said the Saudis already had marginally boosted production by about 300,000 barrels a day, as of May 10, to meet world demand, as they see it. This will boost output to 9.45 million barrels a day in June.

During the talks, the discrepancy between gas prices in the land of plenty and in the land of the “oil-addicted,” as Bush has called the U.S., could hardly be more dramatic: Gas fetches about 46 cents a gallon on the furnace-hot streets of Riyadh, and a gallon of regular in the U.S. has reached an average of $3.73.

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