While they're pleased that President George W. Bush is pushing to open up drilling along the coasts and in Alaska, they're frustrated that it's taken so long for politicians to take US energy dependence seriously.

And they have little hope that either of the presidential candidates -- Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama -- are going to make the tough calls needed to prevent a looming supply crisis.

"We don't like anybody's energy policy right now," said Kirk Edwards, who deals in oil royalties and is the president of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association.

"Energy independence makes a nice soundbite for their people back home but it's impossible to do," he said.

The high price of fuel is going to impose some painful adjustments on the US economy, said Edwards, who also sits on the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Wind and solar power can help meet some energy demands, as can natural gas or even hydrogen powered trucks and vehicles.

But any long-term solutions will require significant conservation efforts and major investments in new technology, he said in an interview.

"We ought to be looking at the technology of energy: nuclear, clean coal and what we can do to get more oil out of the ground. The resources are there it's just you have to have the political drive," Edwards said.

"Nuclear and coal could make transportation fuel but you have to have the will of the government to be led in that direction."

And the problem is that little has been done to curb rising US demand for oil.

"I think Bush has been remiss on this," said Ted Collins who has been in the oil exploration and production business since 1960.

"We're all friends of his, we consider him a local guy, but they should have put (fuel economy) limits on cars years ago."

Collins, who is currently the chairman of Patriot Resources, thinks politicians have been irresponsible for allowing the United States to become so dependent on oil from unstable regimes.

He watched helplessly while the Peruvian government seized the facilities of an oil company he was working for in 1986. And he worries about all the US money now flowing into the Middle East.

But while Collins is doing his best to increase domestic production in the Permian Basin in western Texas - which pumps out nearly a fifth of the nation's oil at about one million barrels a day - he knows it's just a drop in the bucket of the nation's demand, currently around 20 million barrels a day.

"Any politician who says we've got to become independent is kidding themselves," Collins told AFP.

"We've got to conserve. We've got to look for more fuel. We've got to use every source, every tool in the kit."

Consultant Morris Burns, who helped write some of the safety standards for the industry, blames an excess of government regulation for putting a stranglehold on domestic production and refineries.

"There has not been a new refinery opened up in the United States since 1973," he said.

"We can't drill where we know there's oil and we can't refine it when we get it and then they blame the oil companies."

While he does not expect the country to ever become energy independent, he thinks opening up new refineries and production zones will help prevent a total crisis until a long-term solution is found.

"We will get alternative fuels, but as of right now more than 95 percent of transportation runs on oil," he said.

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