PRESIDENT George W Bush will urge Saudi Arabia to curb rocketing oil prices when he meets Crown Prince Abdullah, the country’s de facto leader, tomorrow at his ranch in Crawford, Texas.

The meeting is meant to be a relaxed occasion in which the leaders extend the long-held hand of friendship, but the American public has viewed the House of Saud with scepticism since the September 11 attacks, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis.

With continuing turmoil in Iraq, movement towards democracy in the Middle East and Israeli-Palestinian relations in a new phase, the agenda would have been crowded even without the problem of sky-high oil prices, which is putting domestic pressure on Bush and slowing global economic growth.

Consumers, industry and the stock market were feeling the squeeze as oil prices last week topped $55 a barrel, double the amount when Bush was first elected in 2000. The Saudis have enjoyed a bonanza of wealth while the resentment of Americans at inflated petrol prices has intensified.

Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, said: “If oil prices continue to climb, so does the hatred towards Saudi Arabia. To put it bluntly, the American public feels, ‘If they are allies, why are they charging so much for oil? If they are allies, why are their people trying to kill us?’” Bush stepped up the rhetoric last week by accusing the Saudis of doing too little to meet demand for oil. “I don’t think they’re pumping flat out,” said the president, a former Texas oilman. “I think they’re near capacity and so we’ve just got to get a straight answer from the government as to what they think their excess capacity is.”

Robert Jordan, US ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 2001-3, said he did not expect a change in the post-second world war bargain between the nations, whereby America provides security for the Saudi regime in exchange for enough oil to meet its needs. He added, however, that the Saudis could do more to reassure America they were keeping their side of the deal.

“We need to understand that we’re still on the same page and they’re not just running after new business,” said Jordan, referring to the growing demand for oil by emerging giants such as China and India.

The industry urgently needs to update refineries and develop new oil fields to meet demand. A report by Goldman Sachs last month sent energy prices soaring when it warned that oil markets could be entering a “super spike”, with crude prices peaking at $105 a barrel.

According to Jordan, as a sign of their good intentions, “the Saudis will be required to invest billions of dollars to expand their production capacity”.

Ali Naimi, the Saudi oil minister, said last week the country was willing to boost its pumping capacity to 11m barrels a day, its current maximum.

He also announced that Saudi Arabia would double its investment in energy to $50 billion over the next five years, raising pumping capacity to 12.5m barrels a day by 2009.

There are several pressure points on the Saudis, who are hoping this week’s visit to Crawford will seal a deal that will help it join the World Trade Organisation by the end of the year.

Trade relations have suffered since September 11. It has become increasingly difficult for Saudi businessmen to gain visas to America, while few Americans want to work in the foreigners’ compounds that have become prime targets for Al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia.

Bush intends to remind the 83-year-old crown prince that the Saudis’ recent success in killing terrorist leaders solves only part of the problem of militant Islamic fundamentalism.

“He will want to talk to him about the ideological support for terrorism and make sure they are also dealing with extremist clerics in schools and mosques,” said Jordan.

Bush is more likely to emphasise the importance of nurturing civil society instead of encouraging moves towards a full-scale democracy that could see the Islamists win power.

Impatient with the prospect of reform, some conservative hawks are beginning to go “green” on environmental issues in the hope of lessening American dependence on oil.

Matthew Simmons, a Texas energy investment banker and author of Twilight in the Desert, a controversial book to be published next month, has been warning that it would be foolish to rely on the Saudis’ ability to boost capacity as their largest oil fields may be running dry.

“There is a risk that the oil could peak and begin the same steady decline that happened in America after 1970 or in the North Sea in 1999,” he said.

Many analysts believe Simmons is exaggerating the problem. Nevertheless, for some the answer is to embrace nuclear power, an issue Bush intends to raise at the G8 summit in Scotland in July.

If the president succeeds in persuading the Saudis to help lower oil prices, there will be little incentive for firms to invest in alternative technologies. “Nuclear power is considered to be one of the safest and least polluting sources of energy you can get, so we should look seriously at it, but nobody wants it in their back yard,” said Jordan.

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