Washington ? Gasoline prices will remain high for years to come and will be largely unaffected by the new White House plan to bring them down, Bush administration officials said Sunday.

Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman said the United States faces an oil price “crisis” because surging demand from such countries as China and India has outstripped supply.

“The suppliers have lost control of the market,” Bodman told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“Clearly, we’re going to have a number of years – two to three years – before suppliers are in a position to meet … demands,” he said.

Joshua B. Bolten, the White House chief of staff, acknowledged that President Bush’s new program to deal with the price increases would have only a “relatively modest” effect on prices in the short term.

“This is a very large problem,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” “It’s built up over many years – decades, in fact. It’s not going to be solved in the short run by some silver bullet. There are a lot of policies that need to be put in place over the long run to wean ourselves from our dependence on foreign oil.”