ELI5, why does diesel cost so much more than petrol if it’s easier to refine from crude oil?
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There is the supply side of the situation, how much it costs to produce. Then there is the demand side, how much gets used. Diesel has a lot of demand in industry. Trucks, freight trains, heating, manufacturing, farm equipment, etc.
They are able to sell all their diesel fuel at the price they’re putting in and they’re going to keep selling it that way.
Then in the US, gas taxes have not increased since 1993, but diesel has. State and local taxes might change this, but at the federal level It costs $0.06 more in taxes for diesel. 18 cents for gasoline and 24 cents for diesel
In short, supply and demand. There are a lot more vehicles and parts of our infrastructure that run on diesel than you think. Semi trucks, freight trains (use diesel to make electricity), ships, heavy equipment, back up generators (power plants use them to produce more electricity when needed), Commercial grade pickup trucks, specialized trucks, municipal and DOT vehicles, school busses, etc.
Semi trucks have 125-300 gallon tanks, your average car these days usually carries no more than 30 gallons. When they buy diesel they buy it it much larger quantities. Your average gas station may have diesel available, but they mostly sell gasoline, so they have much larger 87 Gasoline storage tanks than the other varieties of gasoline and diesel.
If you’re a fleet operator and you have your own pumps in your yard for vehicles to fill up, you may not be paying as much.
That’s only a thing in the USA. In Europe it’s cheaper but here for some reason it’s made artificial more expensive.
In 84% of all countries diesel is cheaper than gas so this shows that it’s an artificial price they use to make diesel more expensive to discourage people from buying it.
They might do it because it’s harder to clean the exhaust of diesel and want to get rid of the old polluting trucks we have.
Diesel is in higher demand in the US on account of the massive freight rail and trucking systems.
In my country, unsubsidized diesel and petrol cost almost the same which is around 1 us dollar per liter.
I’m not sure where you got the notion its easier to refine. Diesel is a heavier cut than mogas, so it requires more energy just to distill it. Then it needs to be refined further to remove sulphur and nitrogen compounds. Plus, different refineries will have different constraints like access to different kinds of crude based on geography, different metallurgy that limits crude sources further, and unit design / size, storage, etc.
Refining is complex
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