A friend of mine predicted a couple weeks back that Bush would intervene to try and make gas prices drop just ahead of the election, in the hopes that low oil prices will buy his ticket back into the White House. Looks like he was right:
Oil prices inched closer to $50 a barrel Thursday even as the Bush administration offered to tap the nation’s emergency stockpile of crude on behalf of refiners whose supply was disrupted by Hurricane Ivan.
It would be the first time the government loaned oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in almost two years.
Bush has been very sparing in operating the oil reserve. The idea behind it is to speculate… Sell parts of the reserve when oil prices climb to cool off prices and keep gas pump tabs low, and then buy back to restore the amount in the reserve when prices go down. This way the government buys oil cheap, sells it at a profit, and at the same time keeps everyone happy by keeping gas prices from rising too much. But Bush hasn’t been doing this, until the prices started to hurt his re-election chances.