AutoblogGreen

It's a conspiracy, no seriously. Diesel is cheaper and easier to refine. It's always been cheaper. If Americans (Pull their heads out & the EPA (And California) starts counting pollutants per MILE instead of the asinine pollutants per GALLON) and we start converting in mass to the more efficient diesels, and therefore start using 1/3 LESS of OPEC's product, that's countless BILLIONS lost to them. So they jack the price up call it "supply and demand" and hope to ward off millions from buying the more efficient diesels, of which biodiesel fuels are more viable (net energy gain, etc) than the scam of Ethanol (from corn).

Pollutants per mile is the way to go, how can a accord diesel getting 50-70MPG be polluting MORE than a Hummer getting 6MPG? Yet the diesel is called "dirtier"

Rubbish.

http://www.stealthtdi.com/Emissions.html

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Just another nail in the coffin of the continued use of fossil fuels; get smart Europe, move to BEVs and Solar Power asap before your excellent economic boat quits floating; the sea of oil is drying up fast and when oil peaks so will the Euro.

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I currently pay around 1,36 per litre. A few weeks ago we had the funny situation that diesel, super (Euro Super 95 ROZ) and normal (91 ROZ) all were 1,389.

Yes, that translates to $8,26/gal.

Well I do not care that much since my current car averages between 37 and 50mpg and with a lighter foot on the accelerator even more could be possible.

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#1: It's called "supply and demand". And "oligopoly profits" of course.

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Slightly higher is an understatement. Gas here (NJ) is under $3 right now. Diesel is over $4. Almost makes being more efficient pointless. And I thought I was thinking ahead and being responsible years ago, now I just feel like I made a mistake.
Anyone want to buy my diesel? No, doesnt come with full tank.

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eckre:
Again, pollutants are NOT measured per gallon.

http://www.dieselnet.com/standards/us/ld_ca.php

See the standards? It's in grams per MILE. A mile is not a measure of fuel volume, it's distance traveled.

Educate yourself.

This measure of prices also doesn't take into account that Diesel is 15% heavier than gas and thus you are getting 13% fewer gallons of Diesel in a metric ton than you do gallons of gas.

Diesel costs more per gallon because it contains more H-C-H molecules per gallon (which is also why it is heavier).

And Diesel was cheap to make before because it was just skimmed off the crude basically. It was relatively unrefined. Nowadays, it has to be heavily processed to remove contaminants and sulfur, both of which will clog up emission systems if left in.

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Raw diesel is indeed cheaper to refine than gasoline, but getting the sulfur down below 15ppm is more expensive. US gasoline is still at 30ppm, scheduled to drop to 15 in 2010. Also, diesel prices are always higher in cold winters, especially on the East Coast where many home owners still rely on heating oil, a competing application. Much of it is imported from elsewhere in the US, so prices there are high too.

With the dollar so weak, things won't improve much next winter. Time to switch to a wood pellet stove when the heating season is over!

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2005/10/wood_pellet_sto.php
http://www.woodpelletprice.com/

About 6% of ULSD production is currently exported, most of it to Europe. Refineries there can't produce enough of it economically because there's too little demand for the by-product gasoline. In a couple of months, it will be the US that imports vast quantities of gasoline from the Old World to stockpile for the infamous summer driving season. Roughly 1 in 7 gallons consumed in the US throughout the year is imported.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/info_glance/petroleum.html

Meanwhile, many consumers on both sides of the Atlantic don't even know that a liter of diesel contains 12-15% more energy and therefore *should* cost roughly that much more than gasoline. In the US, the premium is currently more like 20% because of those exports. With price parity at the pump, European diesel consumers are still getting a sweet deal relative to their gasoline brethren, especially given that diesel engines are also a lot more efficient and are allowed to emit more toxins because of it.

To recoup revenue lost to switching registration fees to CO2 and in response to pleas from refinery managers, European finance ministers are now finally addressing the historical tax bias in favor of diesel fuel. It's a slow process because member states are sovereign in tax matters, so any changes in the minimum tax rate require unanimous approval by all who participate in that system (Luxembourg doesn't). Meanwhile, car makers don't want to see an erosion in diesel market share because that would make meeting the upcoming fleet average CO2 emissions that much harder.

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"The most expensive gasoline in Europe last January was on sale in the Netherlands. The Dutch paid an average of 1.506 EUR/liter"

Great. And that's on top of everything else that is more expensive then somewhere else. When I can my hands on an Aptera Typ1-e I will be so happy!

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"diesel prices in the U.S. are slightly higher than gasoline"

Filled up today and noticed that diesel is 32% higher than gasoline. I guess it all depends on your definition of "slightly higher".

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Slightly higher? I paid 2.98 for regular today and diesel was 3.99, this was in south Jersey.

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But eckre's point is still valid.
Why would GM and Dingle go Insane and get on the ethanol bus, when they could make more money on bio-diesel, and burn less gallons?

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The saving grace of diesel IMO: you can make it at home (biodiesel), while you can't make gasoline..

.. And at $4+ /gal, it's starting to look pretty damn tempting :/

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I was an advocate of more diesel powered vehicles until I realized that the amount of diesey you can get from a barrel of oil is only about 1/2 the amount of gasoline. The amount used per mile would be less, but the availability would be less and the price would continue upward.

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Simple answer is move the heck out of Jersey.

Also if ALL oil was refined into diesel (there is nothing other than the demand of gasoline that prohibits that, except for plastics and polymers) there wouldn't be such strife.

Nothing is built or shipped without diesel's touch. In eruope, hardly anything but the rich would move. Wasn't the last fiure 51% of most europeans are driving a diesel-powered vehicle?

Something to consider. But then, they also ahve GTL and BTL (Gas and Biomass to Liquid fuels) that the US only talks about. The Athens taxi's from the 04 Olympics were all powered by clean sub-15ppm Sulfur GTL fuel by shell. It's nothing unusual there, but I think only 2 or 3 Shell stations in California and posisbly Texas sell GTL here... at about $2 more per gallon than the crude diesel counterpart, you get about 15% better diesel economy with it even under load.

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