Why do oil companies charge so much for DIESEL when it comes from a much less process than other fuels?

Question

The Catalactic Craker process clearly shows much less of a process as to other fuels ,those that emerge above are cheaper- more process more cost

Answer 1

After doing some research on the internet, I found that the federal excise tax is 6 cents higher per gallon of diesel than for a gallon of gasoline.  Other reasons include increased world wide demand for diesel refining issues related to the production of low-sulphur formulations of diesel.

Something you may not find is what we already know.  Greed.

Answer 2

Because they can

Sorry my answer is so long winded but it says it all

Answer 3

I'm afraid your question, or more precisely the information after the primary question does not make much sense.  Catalytic cracking is not the process used to produce diesel fuel.  It is primarily a gasoline producer.  The diesel range material it does produce is of a very low quality and must be further treated it is to be used as diesel fuel.  Diesel is produced either directly from crude oil (straight run diesel).  In todays world, this stream must usually be hydrotreated to remove sulfur.  To make ultra low sulfur diesel, straight run diesel must be severely hydrotreated.  This requires processing with high purity hydrogen at very high pressures, and this cost quite a bit to do.  

The other primary source of diesel is via hydrocracking of heavy gas oils.  This is done using high purity hydrogen at high pressures and is also quite expensive.

Answer 4

environMENTALists got reduced sulpher fuel introduced. that caused extra refining.

since we have a hard time getting refineries built here in the u.s. (thanks again, environMENTALists)

we can't produce enough gasoline.

that means diesel is taken and cracked to get lighter fuels, which are more profitable.

Answer 5

More money in there pockets...

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Answer 6

There is some fraction of the crude oil that can never be made into diesel by any known process. The rest of the crude can be refined to make gasoline, tar, and other products. To make more diesel without also making more gasoline and tar and so on is impossible. And if there is no market for that other stuff, then you have to "waste" it by just throwing it away, or just throwing away the rest of the crude without refining that other stuff out. Instead, the company just raises the price of diesel until the amount they can sell is just what they have available after making just the amount of gasoline and other products. They have to balance the market to match the ratios of different products in the crude. If nobody wanted diesel, but everybody wanted gasoline, then gasoline would be expensive and diesel would be cheap. In the 1970s U.S. auto makes were making and selling diesel cars because diesel was cheaper than gasoline. Lots of people saw the benefit and bough the cars. But that caused the demand for diesel to exceed the supply and the price went up. Diesel cars are still popular in Europe, but if the world wide ratio of the demand for gasoline and diesel gets too far away from the ratio that is possible to extract from crude oil, the price of the more in demand product will rise, while the price less in demand product will fall.

So basically it is a complex economic problem and not only the cost of the Catalytic Cracker process that must be considered.

Answer 7

Ultimately price is determined by the demand for the product, not the cost to produce it or even the taxes.

The demand for diesel is sufficiently high that the market will support a higher price for diesel.

That was not always the case.

Diesel at one time was substatnially cheaper than gasoline.

As diesel powered cars have become more popular that has increased the demand for diesel and the price for diesel has increased accordingly.

Increased supply will push the price of diesel back down.

To increase the supply we need to build more refineries.

A new refinery has not been built in the United States for more than thirty years.

Of course diesel is a fossil fuel.

A better solution is to convert our electric generation capacity from fossil fuels such as coal to sources that do not use fossil fuels.

Once we have done that, the battery technology should have increase sufficiently that we can bring back the electric car.

Answer 8

It depends on country I guess. But as using and burning diesel tends to cause so much more pollution than most other fuels, I guess that it could be taxes. Or the fact that most mining and farming vehicles use it, so they can ask more.