It makes no sense. Diesel takes less refining than gasoline? You would think that gasoline would cost more? Maybe demand for gasoline is higher?
I believe the gov simply taxes the hell out of diesel.
TXEagle has the answer. There is a lot more refining required to reduce the sulfur levels to those required by the EPA.
A lot of diesel fuel is purchased through long-term contracts between major trucking companies and the large retail chains for huge volumes of fuel. So at a location near a major highway it may be that most of the fuel is being sold for far less than the posted price. When fuel prices increase dramatically in a short period of time, the retailer has to sell the diesel fuel to small-volume customers (with no fuel contracts) at a higher markup to make up for the very small profit they make on the high-volume sales to the big customers.
It’s cheaper if you have a commercial license. There are extra taxes for people who just drive personal diesel vehicles.
There’s more heat energy per gallon in diesel so at least you’re getting that. But the govt mandated emission controls have really hurt the diesel efficiency and added maintenance cost. In the good old days you had 20:1 compression on diesels, now it’s much lower like 16:1.
“ It makes no sense. ”
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Agree. I remember when diesel was about half the price of gasoline.
For one thing, the federal excise tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents per gallon and 24.4 cents per gallon for diesel fuel.
Greenies never liked diesel. Now, they’re going after gasoline to force us into expensive golfcarts.