fuel cost

[markja]

why is diesel so expensive compared to petrol?
i would have thought petrol needs more refining therefore cost more.

[buildersmate]

Not quite, mdoo. When crude oil is cracked, different hydrocarbon products come out. Some of the lighter products are suitable for petrol, whilst diesel is a heavier product. The proportion of what the refiner gets depends on the quality and source of the crude, and is (slightly) adjustable by the refinery varying the cracking parameters.

After that it is supply versus demand for the produced product. Over the last few years demand for industrial heavy heating oil and motor diesel (which are similar products) has increased more than that of petrol (relatively). So the price goes up more.

Bitumen is another byproduct of cracking - a very heavy product. Its price is low because the refiners cannot stop it being produced (they can try and limit it). If someone found a creative way of using bitumen as a fuel, the price would soon rocket.

[jake-the-peg]

I think it's mostly a taxation issue.

Diesel is reckoned on being more polluting now so it's taxed heavier.

Incidently the EU tried to get harmonised tax on diesel about 6 years ago but it'd have made it much cheaper over here so it never happened

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/2143941.st m

And people give out about the EU !

[Ethel]

When I bought my first diesel car over 20 years ago, diesel was less than half the price of petrol, so it made sense to drive a diesel.

Not the case now, unless you do in excess of 40000 miles a year.

[gouldc]

Being incredibly suspicious of the governments motives for taxing ''more polluting vehicles (can someone explain how my newer, less polluting, smaller engined car costs MORE to tax than my old banger?), I have my own little theory - it's more tongue in cheek than serious.

Diesel cars get better MPG, so therefore you (in theory) need to fill up less than if you had a petrol car.

So the government simply hike up the diesel prices to account for selling less of the stuff!

[david1702198]

diesel is probably more expensive now because of its increasing popularity among folk who are looking for good fuel economy so they can afford to charge more for diesel because there are more folk on the road who have a diesel.

[jake-the-peg]

The tax bands have been done based on emissions since 2001.

Cars before that are lumped into two bands or not at all if before 1973.

The older cars will slowly work their way out of the system as to be a negligable effect overall.

This is typically the policy with cars. When seat belt legislation was passed we didn't all have to go out and retrospectively fit rear seat belts.

It was the same logic with catalysts. Now the percentage of cars on the road without one must be very small.

[Disco Fever]

Diesel is probably dearer due to van drivers like myself use more and of lorries so the government get more money...