I’ve noticed this for as long as I’ve cared about gas prices but am only now getting around to asking, so I’m not specifically talking about any one period of time. Why are diesel prices seemingly so divorced from unleaded prices? I understand the concept of a price difference, but sometimes that price difference is $1 or $1.50, sometimes it’s 50 cents, and I’ve even seen the rare example where it’s cheaper than unleaded. Are the same forces acting on unleaded prices not acting on diesel? Why are they so independent of each other?
EDIT: I should specify that my experience is in the USA. It seems prices track much more closely in the EU/UK.
In: Economics
Both diesel and gasoline come from oil. There is no way to just make one or the other. But at any given time there is a different amount of demand for one or the other. So whenever you are making enough gasoline to fully fill the demand, you might not be making enough diesel to fully fill the demand.
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