Not a word from Bush about attacking the demand side of the equation by burning less oil, although after the 1973-74 oil embargo the U.S. managed to cut its oil consumption by almost 30 per cent strictly by energy conservation.

Not a word about the consequences for climate change of burning so much oil or about the implications of soaring oil demand in the emerging Asian giants, China and India, for prices and supply. Just a promise to cut American oil imports from the Middle East by three-quarters -- by 2025.

As so often with Bush, it's hard to tell whether he is trying to fool us or just fooling himself. Sixty per cent of the oil the U.S. consumes is imported, up from 53 per cent when Bush took office.

Last year, less than one-fifth of that imported oil came from the Middle East, so achieving Bush's stated goal would only bring the share of imported oil in U.S. consumption back to the level of 2001.

And much of it would still come from "unstable parts of the world."

The three largest sources of American oil imports are Canada, Venezuela and Nigeria.

Canada is stable but Venezuela is definitely not, mainly because the U.S. keeps trying to destabilize it.

The Bush administration loathes President Hugo Chavez for his socialism and his closeness to Fidel Castro and has already been implicated in one attempted coup against him in 2002.

If there were to be another attempt and Chavez suspected American involvement, an embargo on Venezuelan oil exports to the U.S. would be pretty much a certainty.

As for Nigeria....

"It must be clear that the Nigerian government cannot protect your workers or assets," declared the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) in an e-mail last month to oil companies working in the region. "Leave our land while you can or die in it.

"Our aim is to totally destroy the capacity of the Nigerian government to export oil."

Since mid-December two major pipelines have been blown up in the Niger Delta, home to all Nigeria's oil. Nine people were killed in an attack on the Italian oil company Agip.

Four foreigners were kidnapped from an offshore rig (and later released, presumably on payment of a large ransom).

And at least 17 people died in a motorboat raid on a Shell flow station in the swamps around Warri.

MEND is the latest expression of the seething dissatisfaction of the region's 20 million people with the fact that all that oil has brought them so little prosperity.

All Nigeria's 129 million people have a legitimate grievance, for most of the $350 billion the country has earned from oil exports in the past fifty years has been stolen by a narrow politico-military elite, but only the people of the Delta live amidst the pollution the oil causes and only they can take direct action.

The Nigerian government seems helpless to do anything about the security situation in the Delta,

The double threat of political guerrillas and criminal gangs has got so severe that Stakeholder Democracy Network, an anti-corruption group active in the area, suggested in a report last month that "Shell and (other) foreign oil operators may have to go offshore altogether by 2008 as security and public order deteriorate."

Who would then buy the onshore oil facilities, assuming MEND had not destroyed them?

Probably China, which is willing to accept higher levels of risk than strictly commercial companies in order to have secure long-term oil supplies.

If Bush insists on treating oil as a supply rather than a demand problem, he should at least find the right trees to bark up.

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.