As lawmakers on a House panel probed for answers at a hearing Monday with a variety of oil analysts, regulators and business types, it was more than apparent that both parties have ideas on oil that deserve consideration.

The problem is, it's hard to convince each party that is the case.

Both sides made their points often throughout the hearing.  For Democrats, they wanted to approve legislation that would knock out some of the speculation in oil futures markets.

A variety of oil analysts said it might help reduce oil prices by 40 to 80 dollars a barrel.

But it could also have unintended consequences as well for many of the same entities who have been making money on the oil price runup.

Those same oil analysts though also said a crackdown on oil market speculators was not a 'silver bullet' that could reduce oil prices, that the US did need to put more oil on the market.

In other words, the US should drill for more oil.

One very interesting part of the hearing centered on a question that we have discussed a number of times, whether the high price of oil would make the industry explore for oil and gas in areas that were not considered practical when oil was down at $40 a barrel.

The answer from four oil analysts - probably not.

All said they would advise oil companies not to consider drilling for any oil that would cost more than $100/barrel to produce.

Two of them said their limit would be around $60/barrel.

In other words, they are worried that this is a price bubble on the oil markets and that sooner or later it will explode and the price of oil will come down.

If you're my father, you think it will come way down at some time in the near future.  (Note to Dad: you better hope it does before you drive home from Wyoming.)

So, don't expect all these profits and all these high prices to send the oil industry into a drilling frenzy, which means there won't be any big surge in oil production in the near term.

And even if there was, several of the analysts said it might not matter, because of the huge growth in demand in China and India.

So in the end, Congress can't control the price of oil, and for that matter, neither can the United States market.

But that won't stop lawmakers from trying.