Why is diesel more than gas here in America?

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The low sulfur reg, and presently, the demand for #2 heating oil after a cold winter.
 
The supply is much smaller than the supply of gasoline.

Fuel oils refined from a barrel of oil represent a much smaller fraction than gasoline does. You get almost twenty gallons of gasoline from each barrel and only about ten gallons of fuel oils.
 
All of the above, plus:

1). Rising demand in China, India, etc.

2). Oil execs, when questioned, answer "Because we can."

3). In the petro cracking process, gasoline volatiles are easier (aka cheaper) to extract than less volatile diesel.
 
Not to disagree with previous posters, but it's the oil companies getting greedy. 10-15 years ago, diesel was half the price of gasoline, or less. With the proliferation of diesel work/daily driver trucks, school buses and autos, the oil companies saw the dollar signs and jacked up the price.
 
The reason prices are lower relative to gas in other places are tax related as well. In Europe they have lower relative tax on industrial fuel (Diesel) to encourage economic activity but maintain high taxes on consumer use (gasoline) to raise money and decrease consumption of imported fuels.

Usually when the high Gasoline use season (Summer driving) comes then Gas will end up higher than diesel.

Another factor is that Diesel use is less price sensitive than Gas. If Diesel goes up users (commercial) are able to pass on most of the cost to their customers but cutting back use (reducing demand) is very difficult. When gas goes up consumers will cut back quicker and reduce demand (more price elasticity).
 
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It is only partly taxes. As far as I know, the diesel excise tax is everywhere higher than gasoline, with the difference ranging from 1.5 cents/gal in NV to 10 cents/gal in VT.

This is speculation, but the excise tax might be greater because people figure that heavy, diesel-powered vehicles damage roads more than gasoline-powered vehicles for each unit volume of fuel consumed.

I don't buy "oil companies getting greedy" statements. Pricing something at the level people are willing to pay is just natural market behavior. I wouldn't have it any other way.
 
It is all marketing/politics and supply/demand economics. In a refinery, most slop is sent to the diesel stream. During projects, process upsets are sent to the diesel stream. Low sulfur processing adds costs, but the same costs are there for gasoline as well.
 
One factor here is less competition-one brand (ususally Speedway) goes up, and EVERYONE else follows. It happened here yesterday-Speedway went to $3.759, by this morning 95% of all stations matched them. Fortunately I have ONE BP right by me that doesn't jump until he needs his tanks filled-I'm going to stock up today @ $3.459. Pure GREED!
 
I'd say just to rip the people and make huge profits.
Look what a bottle of water cost - they don't ship it over, process it through huge plants the way they do fuels.
 
I would go with the the fact that oil and fuels are a global commodity. Since the majority of the rest of the world in using diesel, the commodity price of diesel just follows demand and is higher. Most of the gas that Europe gets out of a barrel of oil is shipped to the U.S., and some of the diesel distilled here, including a good percentage of biodiesel, goes overseas to meet that demand.

Fuel taxes do not account for the spread between gas and diesel prices. I operate commercial trucks and deal with quarterly IFTA fuel taxes. The Federal tax is the same, the states vary. When you factor out the taxes, diesel is still higher than gas.

As for one station raising it's prices and shortly the others follow suit, look to the fact that they are all usually getting their fuel from the same pipeline terminal, thus same pricing within a few cents. Also, virtually all states have regulations that do not allow for huge pricing differences between stations in the same geographic local. Mostly these regs came out of the days when we used to have price wars on fuel. That is the real politics.
 
When you look at a power station, the cost is $/BTU. We don't buy fuel for our cars on a per BTU basis, but per unit volume.

Diesel, is denser than petrol, and you get more BTUs per gallon.

Used to be that processing produced a fixed(ish) ratio of diesel to petrol, and supply/demand made petrol more expensive than the "byproduct" diesel.

My diesel costs about the same as petrol in my location...Sydney not so much, with diesel more expensive.
 
Gee!

I WISH I could buy diesel at 3.60 a gallon! It is 4.49 a gallon all over Kalifornia. And I unfortunately had to drive to Oregon last week for family business with the Dodge 3500, and the Cummins just hummmed at about 23 mpg! Great mileage for a 1 ton truck!

Steve
 
Originally Posted By: sasilverbullet
Why is diesel more than gas here in America?


Taxes, Taxes, and still more Taxes. Next time you are at the pumps, look at how much goes for taxes. You might see $1 per gallon in taxes.
 
Taxes in the US on gasoline and diesel differ from state to state and usually run $0.04 to $0.10 more per gallon for diesel than gasoline ... link below should help.

fuel taxes
 
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Aside from market forces, the refinery operating plan is largely based on which products will yield the highest returns. Why would we produce more ULSD when the margins are greater for our other products?
 
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