Indeed it is.
Recall that in the late '70s, diesel was selling for about 45 cents/gal, while gasoline was about 65 cents/gal. People started buying German diesels, and GM came out with their first diesel cars and light duty trucks.
Then came the Iranian revolution, May of '79.
Ta-da. Overnight, diesel went from 45 cents to 90 cents or so, and gas slid over a dollar.
The oil companies made sure that no one could escape just by purchasing a diesel vehicle.
No no. That would be too easy, dears.
At the time I worked for GM. We were not amused. The power play was so obvious, and the excuses so pathetic (for instance, even then, Iran was only like 3% of our supply, at most. How does the temporary restriction of that tiny amount add up to a doubling of cost?), you could only be angry. People who think this was just "market forces" are fools.
But if diesel hybrids become predominant (and they will in Europe), then the whole scam is going to be a bit difficult to maintain.
But we can all be certain that the OPEC countries and their western enablers will try.
If you'll forgive my cheek, you sound like me! No offense.
BTW; I'm on your tagline. I've taken the liberty to change the spelling some to avoid copyright infringment.
Cold day, and your start could look like a tire dump fire. But it was cheap, especially if you could buy 1000 gals at a time and weren't super-patriotic about road taxes and knew a little about dyes.
Our new lower sulfur fuel is satisfactory for sale in Europe, thus creating a competing market for our fuel supply. The European fuel has sulfur levels higher than we permit, thus their fuel supply isn't impacted by demand from U.S. based consumers.