Click here to view "Had Enough."

The American Future Fund, a conservative free-market advocacy group, began airing a TV spot (subscription) Wednesday encouraging viewers to lobby Congress to pass the Gas Price Reduction Act of 2008 and open parts of the continental shelf for offshore drilling. The ad strings together six claims about the country's untapped energy reserves, including contrasting Cuba's offshore exploration efforts with the American ban on such drilling. It closes by contrasting 45-cents-a-gallon gasoline in Saudi Arabia with fuel prices in the U.S., citing a Wall Street Journal article (subscription) that warns about the possibility of $6 gasoline.

The American Future Fund has run a number of television and radio spots since late summer excoriating Democrats for not getting behind legislation to permit offshore exploration and oil shale extraction from federal lands. But while those ads were run primarily in oil shale-rich Colorado and in Nevada, the home of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D), "Had Enough?" is running nationwide on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC.

"As Congress comes back into session, we thought it was a good opportunity to educate people on energy, knowing that Congress took a five-week recess instead of dealing with these tough issues," said Tim Albrecht, national communications director for the American Future Fund.

A number of the ad's "facts" are open to interpretation, however. The claim that "the U.S. actually has more oil resources than Saudi Arabia" is supported only by a quote in a Washington Post story from President Bush. And even that claim depends on the ability of Big Oil to find a safe, cost-effective way of turning oil shale into fuel for consumers, a challenge that even the petroleum industry says will be a tall order.

More puzzling is the ad's reference to gasoline prices in Saudi Arabia, prices that are kept artificially low by government subsidies.

"It’s quite a contrast between these foreign countries overseas getting rich off the American dollar while they are paying a fraction of what we are," Albrecht said.

So should the U.S. government subsidize gas prices in America?

"No," he said. "We're free-market capitalists here."