The president will also propose the extension of an existing tax credit for hybrid and fuel cell vehicles to include fuel-efficient clean diesel vehicles, and call for more international cooperation in the development of energy technologies.

The average price for a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. has reached $2.21, 23 percent higher than a year ago, says the American Automobile Association. At the same time, consumer confidence declined for the third straight month in April and fell to a five-month low.

After a meeting between Bush and Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah at the president’s ranch on April 25, a Saudi spokesman said high gas prices were partly the result of a lack of refining capacity in oil importing nations rather than being solely due to a shortage of supply.

Saudi Arabia is not offering any immediate steps to help relieve high gas prices, other than pledging to boost oil production by 1.5 million barrels a day by the end of the decade. Daily production by OPEC rose 700,000 barrels to 30.4 million this month, with most of the oil coming from Saudi Arabia.

Last year, a record 273 million tonnes of crude oil was refined in China, an increase of 13.7 percent from a year before. That one-year increase was the largest in 30 years.

The second-largest consumer of crude oil after the United States, China is expected to need 320 million tonnes of oil this year, an 11 percent increase from last year, when it used 288 million tonnes.

China has been a net importer of petroleum products since 1993 and of crude oil since 1996. Foreign producers supply approximately a third of China’s oil demand.