In the Senate, gas price politics have put the search for a winning bill onto two tracks.

There’s the official committee track, and then there’s the unofficial track, where a bipartisan, ad hoc clique has set out to separately negotiate a consensus plan.

What the clique’s five Democrats and five Republicans have in common is an intense local economic interest. For some that interest is ethanol; for others, it’s oil shale, offshore drilling, wind power or the pressures of a low-income constituency.

The group intends to meet as often as it can — and every Senate session day if it must — to come up with a plan to lower energy costs and get it passed before the August recess.

Temporary coalitions are nothing new in the Senate, where a “Gang of 14” thwarted then-Majority Leader Bill Frist (1995-2007) when he wanted a new Senate precedent on the handling of judicial nominations.

The gas price gang was assembled by two senators who learned just in the past year that they like working together.

Kent Conrad, D-N.D., and Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., said they went from acquaintances to friends during discussions about how to rewrite federal farm law (PL110-246).

As chairman of the Budget Committee and ranking Republican on the Agriculture Committee, respectively, they spent a lot of time together during the rewrite, and their collegial conversations continued after their work was done.

“We knew that there was a lot we agreed on in the farm bill,” Chambliss said. “When we sat in his office to talk, it was pretty clear that we have a lot of things on energy in common, too.”

Their starting point on energy will be a determination to lower prices without sacrificing any senator’s local economy. The same principle guided the decision to preserve crop supports, so Conrad and Chambliss think it’s possible to do the same again.

The group that Conrad and Chambliss assembled includes Democrats Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana, and Ben Nelson of Nebraska, as well as Republicans John Thune of South Dakota, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Johnny Isakson of Georgia, and Bob Corker of Tennessee.

Of those, only Landrieu and Lincoln serve on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, where Lincoln has been a low-key member and Landrieu has often bucked her party on questions involving the oil industry.

Offshore drilling will almost certainly be part of the Senate group’s debate. Most Republicans support the idea, and a growing number of Democrats have agreed that they could get behind it so long as there are restrictions.

Part of the plan could involve lifting the moratorium on offshore drilling in some areas, including in parts of the Gulf of Mexico currently banned from production — an approach that coalition member Landrieu advocates. In 2006, she was instrumental in opening up so-called Lease Area 181, an underwater, oil-rich area off the Louisiana coast, and in making sure that surrounding states, including her own, reaped some of the revenue.

Landrieu has an additional motivation to help build a quick, effective bill that enhances her state’s drilling economy. She’s the only Senate Democrat up for re-election this year in a contest rated as competitive by CQPolitics.com, with her seat designated “leans Democrat.”

Meanwhile, Democrats and Republicans representing treeless expanses of farm country in the upper Midwest will be talking alternative energy.

Thune, for example, is one of the Senate’s top proponents of wind energy. He says his state may be the windiest in the country and the capacity for production there is substantial.

Conrad is an advocate for biofuels that can be made from the crops grown in his home state, which also has oil shale reserves and has produced about 29.6 million short tons of coal in 2007, according to the Department of Energy.

Pryor said his local interest is consumers.

His state’s median income and its percentage of white-collar workers are both below the national average, making basic pocketbook issues an essential part of his portfolio.

“The people of Arkansas expect me to put partisanship aside and do what’s right for the country,” he said. “I tell you, energy prices are strangling my people in Arkansas right now.”

But no matter what the bipartisan group comes up with, since it is working outside normal channels, there is no guarantee that its bill would come to the floor or get the majority leadership’s seal of approval — without which it would be nearly impossible to get a floor vote.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has remained relatively quiet about the coalition, saying only that “they can talk about whatever they want,” though in recent weeks he has been emphasizing Democrats’ willingness to drill offshore.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R‑Ky., has been touting the party’s Gas Price Reduction Act as an effort to “find more and use less” oil, though Republicans in the group say that bill is just a starting point and the final deal will need to appeal to a wider array of lawmakers.

Members of the group say they are not out to defy their leadership but are frustrated at Congress’s inability to step in and help consumers.

“We’re not bucking anyone,” Isakson said. “But you can go out to the public for so long and make excuses as to why Congress hasn’t done anything and after a while you get a 9 percent approval rating.”

Energy experts tend to agree that Congress will not be able to significantly lower gasoline prices in the near term.

The Senate Energy chairman, Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., is among those who say that only a broad, comprehensive policy would seriously affect prices, and that even so, the impact wouldn’t be felt for five to 10 years.

But that’s not what outraged voters want to hear in an election year, and there is a tremendous interest on Capitol Hill in showing responsiveness to the gas pump pain.

In fact, just as the Senate’s gasoline gang started to talk about its work, two longtime drilling advocates in the House, Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawaii, and John E. Peterson, R-Pa., announced their own bipartisan effort.

All that said, it’s still up to leadership in both chambers to bring the bill to the floor.

“And getting the president to sign it? That’s another story,” Pryor said.

Coral Davenport contributed to this story.