While beg­ging the Saudis for oil recently, Bush must have felt his clout slip­ping away as the topic of dis­cus­sion turned always back to who would become his replacement.

The Saudis may give Bush lit­tle com­fort: Oil Min­is­ter Ali al-Naimi said in Riyadh that more crude would be pumped only “when the mar­ket jus­ti­fies it.” The min­is­ter noted that economies were still grow­ing with oil higher than $90 a bar­rel, and said that his coun­try wanted to avoid “cycles of volatility.”

Saudi Ara­bia sup­plies the United States with about 1.4 mil­lion bar­rels of crude oil a day, one-seventh of U.S. imports and sec­ond only to the 1.9 mil­lion bar­rels from Canada. Saudi clout in pro­duc­tion shapes the world oil mar­ket, and its poli­cies will weigh on the Feb. 1 meet­ing of the Orga­ni­za­tion of Petro­leum Export­ing Countries.

As Bush’s trip unfolded, U.S. depen­dence on Saudi Ara­bia was fur­ther illus­trated when Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, Citigroup’s biggest indi­vid­ual investor, dis­closed that he had put more money into the New York-based bank­ing com­pany. The increase was announced the same day Cit­i­group posted a $9.83 bil­lion fourth-quarter net loss, the biggest in its 196-year his­tory, tied to the mort­gage meltdown.

Once the num­ber one sup­plier of oil to the US they now rank 7th behind Canada and hav­ing duly pur­chased an arro­gance to thwart Bush’s for­mer swag­ger are dis­in­ter­ested in reclaim­ing the top spot.

Bush’s poli­cies “have been cat­a­strophic” for the Saudis, Chas Free­man (for­mer US ambas­sador to the king­dom) says. He cites neglect of the con­flict between Israel and the Pales­tini­ans, along with the Iraq inva­sion that has empow­ered Iran, thereby threat­en­ing the dom­i­nance of Sunni lead­ers in the region.

In answer to the Iran­ian threat, Bush offered to sell Saudi Ara­bia kits for satellite-guided smart bombs val­ued at about $123 mil­lion. The admin­is­tra­tion for­mally noti­fied Con­gress of the deal dur­ing his visit.

Because of U.S. depen­dence, there is lit­tle Bush could do to prod the Saudis toward more democ­racy, a cor­ner­stone of the president’s rhetor­i­cal pol­icy toward the Mid­dle East since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when oil prices were around $28 a barrel.