Tank7

Noticed in the last week or so, around here, diesel costs more than premium. Any ideas why this has happened?

scottybdiving

It's the changeover to ULSD. Texas and Cali. made the switch ahead of most of the country. The same thing happened here a couple years ago. Now it fluctuates between the price of regular and premium. It's simply supply and demand, until all the refineries are updated.

Danno4x4

I have noticed a fluctuation as well...

But not much in the price of diesel...

The big fluctuations seem to be in the price of gasoline. A few months ago the price of diesel was less than the price of regular unleaded, and now it is more than premium. I think that this is because gasoline went down.

In general the price elasticity of diesel seems to be much less than that of gasoline.

240D 3.0T

The changeover to ULSD happened June of 06.

It's going up because it's the time of year for people to start ordering heating oil for winter.

genew

You hit the nail on the head
How many miles you got on the 240D?

240D 3.0T

I just put in my 6000mile oil sample at 211,240miles.

jhutton

yup, its time to put the diesel away for winter hibernation and bring the saab out. i know this is off topic but any sugestions on storing my car for winter, also i am going to use this down time to fix some oil leaks
thanks

jason

84 300 SD

scottybdiving

True enough, but instead of being significantly cheaper than all grades of gasoline, as it was forever, it initially shot up to a level more expensive than even premium. My understanding is that the retrofit for the refineries to produce S15, was very costly, and there was some reluctance at first. With exception to CA; off-road, marine, and railroad diesel is S500 as of 1/1/07. We are paying for the upgrades to produce it, lower production of S15, and seasonal fluctuations.

DerekACS

How come then that Canadian prices for ULSD are less than regular gas and much less than premium gas ??
Are the American oil companies socking it to their diesel customers ?
Currently in the Vancouver area, ULSD is selling for between $0.98/L and $1.03/L , compared to Premium gas @ $1.20 -$1.25/L.
For those members interested in travelling to Canada, the ONLY kind of diesel permitted and available for on road use is ULSD.

scottybdiving

The same applies to the US, ULSD unless for off-road, marine, or train use.

Diesel should always be cheaper than gas, aples to aples, because it cost less to refine. S&D drives the price. Since the conversion to S15 started, the demand has been higher than the supply. All the refineries didn't just flip a switch on 6/1/06 and start pumping out S15. They can still sell S500 to Ag, Marine, Railroad, and Construction industries in 49 states.

As far as Canada, you could only conclude that the demand vs supply is lower than the US.

StevethePilot

If you're interested in gas prices, you can often find local prices reported by intrepid drivers such as ourselves who go out, see what the price is, and tell everyone. Here in town it's Phoenixgasprices.com, which I think I found through Arizonagasprices.com. It's probably in about every major city individually and a lot of the outlying areas in the bigger ones (like finding diesel in Mayer on Arizonagasprices.com).

It's how I know what the lowest price per gallon of ULSD is here in Phoenix.

harkgar

Is Jackie Lay Tongue your premier? Or is it Oliver Cat Chow? We hate our own Harvard graduate Mayor NDP Davide Milk-La. For our American friends NDP is the Canadian tax loving Communist Party who chose to call themselves the NDP (No Flicking Decent Plicks).

Here in TO unleaded is about $0.97 and permium 10 cents more. ULSD is about the same or slightly lower than unleaded.

The price differential between BC and Ontario is strictly tax, just like your airport tax in the late nineties.

DslBnz

FWIW, around here in New England, there are more than a few stations where diesel is more than 20 cents higher than premium unleaded.

Hard to find diesel for less than 3 bucks a gallon, right now. But gas remains relatively "cheap".

Frugal1

It's higher here right now too but the more Diesel vehicles get on the road, the more we're going to slowly experience a problem: It might be cheaper to refine but . . . a barrel of oil yeilds about 22 gallons of gasoline and about 9 gallons of Diesel fuel. So the more we switch to Diesel . . . who knows . . .it could get worse.

Lets keep it SECRET! If someday 1/2 the cars on the road were Diesel, you'd get 5 free gallons of gasoline for your lawn mower with each $200 fillup of Diesel!

Untertürkheim

Now that Shell has perfected GTL (turning natural gas into diesel), this should begin to be less of an issue. The product, sold in Germany as V-Power Diesel, is far superior to regular diesel.

lkchris

Ah, but diesel contains more BTU of power than gasoline and therefore should be more expensive!

scottybdiving

Very true and I mispelled APPLE twice.

I found this to be both interesting and informative. It is from Peak Oil News. The link explains some of the terminology.

http://www.howstuffworks.com/oil-refining.htm

How much crude oil goes into diesel and gasoline?

The question is actually the opposite--how much diesel and gasoline can you get out of crude oil.

A critical thing that distinguishes oil refining from other production processes is that it is entirely a "co-production" process. That is, you can't just produce gasoline, or just produce diesel, or kerosene, you have to produce them all at the same time.

The two major factors determining how much of each you will get is the crude quality and refinery technology configuration.

As for crude quality, "light" crude contains a lot of the lighter fractions such as gases (LPG), naphtha, gasoline, kerosene and diesel. "Heavy" crude contains more of the heavier fractions, such as fuel oil (the stuff that doesn't boil off until after 650F). These definitions are based on what you would get if you ran the crude through a simple distillation tower, as if you were making moonshine. A heavy crude, for example, might be referred to as "55% 650+ yield", meaning on simple distillation, 55% of your output would be fuel oil. A light crude might yield 30% diesel on simple distillation.

As for refinery configuration, simple "hydroskimming" refineries basically produce products in the same proportion that they are in the crude, as they rely mostly on simple distillation (but they have other processing units that clean up the distillation streams to meet environmental and performance requirements such as octane.) 'Cracking" refineries have more energy-intensive technology such as hydrocrackers, cokers, and fluid catalytic crackers that can take the heavy product molecules and break them apart to make more of the light products such as gasoline.

So the "yield" of gasoline and diesel varies tremendously based on crude and refining situation. But, because the products are co-produced, it is difficult to compare which costs more to produce. In some cases, it may cost more to make gasoline if you start with a heavy crude (more cracking and processing needed) and in some cases it costs more to make diesel if you start with a very light crude. What refiners do is look at what the price of the product is in the market each day, what the demand projection is, and run a refinery simulation model called an "LP" (linear programming) that seeks a solution meeting all simultaneous constraints and maximizes profits (minimizes costs) based on input types (crude, etc), refinery configuration and costs (utilities, water, catalysts), and what the products sell for. And this changes almost daily.

Kerosene is a lighter product that boils off between gasoline and diesel."

paco04

Do you think the US market could get this product soon? Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi are flush with natural gas, and the refining capacity is here to boot.

harkgar

I just returned from England and saw V-Power diesel sold by Shell too. The company advertised it as a "performance" diesel used by Formula One racing diesel engines. I did not know that F-1 has diesel engines.

Prices of gasoline and diesel are sky high in the UK. Double that of Canada.

What the government did was despicable. Britons were encouraged to convert from gasoline to diesel when the latter was cheaper. Once drivers discovered the benefits of diesel engines and took the bait the taxman raised the price of diesel higher than gasoline.

Such is life. The same thing will happen in the USA and Canada.

scottybdiving

I was looking at the different fuel tax rates in the US. It varies due to the individual state's tax rate. The Federal; tax rate is $0.184 / Gal and the average for the combined total is $0.42 / Gal. Then I found out how high the taxes are in Europe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_tax ).

UK, 0.5035 GBP / L , for gas and diesel
Germany, 1.19 (diesel) and 1.37 EU / L (gas), which includes a 19% VAT that taxes the fuel and the fuel tax.
Taxes on taxes? Is this correct?

harkgar

You are 100% right. Taxes on taxes. It happens in Canada too to a lesser extend thanks to Canada's proximity to the USA. The longest un-guarded border in the world with the numerous reservations makes it very difficult for the taxman to stop cross border petroleum shopping. If they can they will color gasoline too like industrial diesel.

The poor Britons have it tough. High alcohol taxes. High cigarette taxes. High death taxes. There is even a "Gift Tax" to stop the gifting of high value items to offspring and friends. No wonder they have the highest incidence of sexually transmitted diseases in the whole of the European Union. The newly coined Prime Minister Gordon Brown has not figured out a way to tax screwing - yet. Radom road side sperm count checking at night? Police with binoculars looking into bedrooms? Listening devices in hotel rooms?

Better not to give Mr. Brown any more ideas.

harkgar

90% of cars on British roads are dinky toys - the size of Minis with smaller engines. The Golf is a "family car"! Engines are mostly 1.2 liter to 1.6 liter with manual transmissions to save fuel. SUVs are nowhere to be seen. Suburbans and Ford Excursions can run over and swash these cars with no problem. Yet people drive at 90 mph on the motorways as if they are driving much bigger and more powerful cars. I hate to think what will happen to them in a collision.

To give the British (non-politician Brits) their due driving skills are by and large much better than those of North America.

scottybdiving

I would like to say that would never fly here but........... Depending on the outcome of the next election, we could be well on our way. No further comment from here.

lkchris

It's the fuel used in the Daytona, Sebring, and LeMans winning Audi R10s.

Yes, not Formula 1.

harkgar

Is Shell V diesel available in the USA? Shell Canada offers a premium diesel at a higher price.

I use either common gardener ULSD or Sunoco Gold (Suncor company) and found all of them to be satisfactory. In fact I cannot tell the difference.