CRITICAL LEVEL: Gasoline at P50 per liter is no longer a joke! If the price keeps climbing, and it seems it would, something’s going to give.

Since the administration has not shown any inclination to do something drastic about the soaring price of fuel, burdened consumers may soon have to take things into their own hands.

Fuel is an essential daily need — for power, for cars, motorbikes, trucks, buses and jeepneys, for fishing boats, for cooking, etc. There is no escaping it. This nation goes up or down with it.

President Gloria Arroyo should tell the jittery nation fast what she intends to do.

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BUSH VIEWS: Ever wondered how the president of the world’s superpower views the same problem of skyrocketing gas prices overrunning the great United States?

President George W. Bush disclosed some options in an interview Tuesday at the White House with Michael Allen, chief political correspondent of Politico.com.

Responding to a question submitted via Yahoo, Bush said there was no “quick answer.” But he said that “for there to be a substantial change, either consumers have to change their habits… or there has to be an increase of supply.”

Again, he hedged on whether he would support the federal gas tax holiday being pushed by Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and John McCain (R-Ariz) in their presidential campaigns.

Similarly in Manila, there have been suggestions of value added tax on fuel being scaled down, of royalty tax on natural gas being scrapped or reduced, of certain fuel-related expenses being made tax-free or tax-deductible.

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HIKE SUPPLY: Excerpts from the Bush interview in the Roosevelt Room:

Allen: In the spirit of the Internet, I wonder if we could ask a question from one of our users, Steve Bailey of New York, who says: With oil at $126 a barrel, pushing up the price of everything — even food — what can your administration do to help people right now?

Bush: I appreciate Steven’s concerns. With the price of gasoline going up, it’s like a tax. I wish I could give Steven a quick answer. In other words, it took us a while to get to where we are — very dependent on oil, and in a world in which demand is greater than oil.

So my answer to Steven is that the best thing we can do is to increase supply, and to drill for oil and gas in environmentally friendly ways at home, and build more refineries. Steven probably doesn’t know this, but we haven’t built a new refinery since 1976, and if we’re truly interested in relieving the pressure on our consumers, then we ought to have a very active domestic policy now.

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TAX HOLIDAY: Allen: Mr. President, as you know, as a possible solution, Senator McCain, Senator Clinton have talked about suspending the federal gasoline tax this summer. You never said an absolute “no” to that. Is it something you would consider or do you think it’s a bad idea to consider?

Bush: I’ll consider it. And there’s all kinds of ideas — they’re trying to pass a deal to stop filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve; we’ll look at that.

The truth of the matter is that in order for there to be a substantial change either consumers have to change their habits — which we’re encouraging through alternative tax of automobiles — or there has to be an increase of supply. And both of them have to go hand in hand to achieve less dependence on this very unsettled oil market.

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OTHER OPTIONS: Allen: Mr. President, acknowledging those constraints, you’re an oil man — some people say that climate change, global warming could have been your Nixon-to-China. Do you wish you’d done more?

Bush: I did what I think is necessary to actually work, Michael. I mean, I could have signed a — I could have supported a lousy treaty and everybody would have went, “Oh, man, what a wonderful sounding fellow he is.” But it just wouldn’t have worked. I don’t think you want your President trying to be the cool guy and not end up with policies that actually make a difference.

So the policies I’ve outlined are policies that will actually make a difference: nuclear power for generating electricity; battery driven cars; ethanol. There’s a variety of initiatives — clean coal technology — all of which will help us sustain our economic vitality and at the same time be better stewards of the environment.”

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CONSUMER VOICE: Meanwhile, Cotabato Rep. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza, vice chair of the House committee on legislative franchises, said the Manila Electric Co. and other utilities should reserve at least one seat for consumers on their governing boards.

She said it is important that consumers have “someone whom they can count on, who will consciously look after their interests at all times, in every board of every utility.”

Utilities whose shares are traded on the stock exchange, she said, should be mandated to set aside for consumers at least one of the two board seats allotted for “independent directors.”

An “independent director” is a non-executive board member who is not directly associated with a major investor in the corporation, and is not affiliated with the firm in any other capacity.

Former Chief Justice Artemio V. Panganiban has been nominated as an independent director of Meralco, along with former banking executive Vicente Panlilio.