THE soaring cost of petrol will create a tough summer for American families, President Bush said as pump prices reached record levels and fuel stations ran dry in three states.

What he might have said is that it is also likely to herald an “awful autumn” for Republicans before mid-term Congressional elections in November.

Pump prices have risen by one third over the past year and in some parts of the US have topped $3 (£1.68) a gallon. Among the ultra-rich of Beverly Hills, the cost of fuel has even slipped over the $4 mark.

This is, of course, still far less than the equivalent of about $8 being paid by British motorists, but such comparisons hold little sway in the US where, for many, the unfettered freedom of the individual to drive across wide-open spaces is almost part of the Constitution. By contrast, public transport has, historically at least, been regarded as un-American.

Mr Bush, who toured a plant producing hydrogen-fuelled vehicles, described how “rising gasoline prices [are] like a tax, particularly on the working people and the small business people”. He said: “We’re going to have a tough summer because people are beginning to drive now during tight supply.”

The President went on to explain why, in the short term, he was unable to help. “The American people have got to understand what happens elsewhere in the world affects the price of gasoline you pay here,” he said, referring to rocketing oil demand in India and China.

Although he had tried to get ahead of the issue in his State of the Union address in January, when he said that the US was “addicted to oil”, and promised greater investment in alternative sources of energy, his proposals would take many years to bear fruit.

The rising cost of petrol is seen as the main reason why the relatively good news on the US economy is failing to get through to voters. The Democrats plan to make pump prices the centrepiece of their election campaign this year, when they hope to wrest back control of the House of Representatives and Senate.

In a recent memo to Democratic candidates they were instructed to hold campaign events at local petrol stations: “You will call for a real commitment to bringing down gas prices and pledge you will fight for families in your district, not the oil and gas executives for which the Republican Congress has fought so hard.”

The media has been having a field day with the news that Lee Raymond, the retiring chairman of Exxon Mobil, received a compensation package worth $400 million (£224 million) in his last year in charge. Senator Edward Kennedy twisted the knife yesterday, asking why the President was willing to “tolerate this extraordinary explosion” in oil profits. Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Bill Frist, the Senate Majority Leader, said that they planned to write to Mr Bush calling for an investigation into price manipulation by oil companies.

The rise in the cost of petrol chimes with a wider — and growing — sense of American and global insecurity. Indeed, oil price volatility has been exacerbated by the US foreign policy malaise in the Middle East and the instability of other producer countries such as Venezuela — run by a virulently anti-American Government.

US domestic supplies have also been hit hard by the slow pace of rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina, which devastated refineries on the Gulf Coast.

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