What ever happened to Jawboning

Does anyone but me remember Candidate Bush bragging about how he could 'jawbone' the Saudis into increasing the flow of crude?

"I would work with our friends in OPEC to convince them to open up the spigot, to increase the supply. Use the capital that my administration will earn, with the Kuwaitis or the Saudis, and convince them to open up the spigot. Ours is a nation that helped Kuwait and the Saudis, and you'd think we'd have the capital necessary to convince them to increase the crude supplies."

We were supposed to be impressed that he was such close buds with people who controlled the flow, I think, and therefore vote for him because of his connections.

Perhaps wiser people told Bush to shut up on that subject, that talk of that nature might reveal that the Saudis are pumping at peak capacity right now, and that Ghawar, the world's largest oilfield, is in decline. In any event, you'll notice there's not a lot of talk about persuading the Saudis to turn up the spigot these days, is there?