Proximty of More than Single Words

[T. R. Halvorson]

For proximity expressions, the query parser documentation says, "use the 
tilde, "~", symbol at the end of a Phrase." It gives the example "jakarta 
apache"~10

Does this mean that proximity can only be operated on single words enquoted 
in quotation marks? To clarify the question by comparision, on some systems, 
the w/ proximity operator lets one search for:

crude w/4 "west texas"

or

"spot prices" w/3 "gulf coast"

The Lucene documentation seems to imply that such searches cannot be 
constructed in any straightforward way (although there might be a way to get 
the effect by going around Cobb's Hill). Or does the Lucene syntax allow the 
examples to be cast as:

"crude "west texas""~4

or

""spot prices" "gulf coast""~3

Thanks in advance for any help with this.

T. R.