Posted on 12/11/2014 6:17:48 AM PST by thackney
True. It doesn’t seem to have helped very much, but maybe in the long term it will. There seem to be more diesel cars and PU trucks on the road now than there were a few years ago too.
Gasoline hasn’t really fallen much where I live.
You are getting more BTU/gal with diesel (13% or thereabouts), so from that standpoint a higher price has some merit, at least for that increment.
GasBuddy says to head to Missouri, Oklahoma, or Texas.
While mostly true, there are a few details needed for context.
According to the American Petroleum institute, the sum of all local, state and and federal taxes (US average) is about 55 for diesel and 48 for gasoline. However, the energy density for diesel is also higher (35.8 MJ/L for diesel vs 32.4 for gasoline). The tax differential is very similar and comes close to normalizing along energy density (rough substitute for fuel efficiency).
However, the EPA's emissions requirements are not based on mileage. As such there is a regulatory favoritism towards gasoline. By basing all emissions requirements on actual mileage, this favoritism would be removed.
Side note, some states do have an alternative fuel tax on CNG/LNG and even propane vehicles so there are situations where there is some tax, but not like the federal excise tax on diesel/gasoline.
Heating oil is basically diesel. At this time of year it would seem the demand is not nearly so elastic as that for gasoline.
I do know the US EPA is very anti-diesel.
All their regulations in the last 10 years have reflected that.
In Europe, about half of new car sales are diesel.
Those statements seem to conflict with each other.
By basing all emissions requirements on actual mileage
I see the implementation of such putting government far deeper into our business than desired. I would not support it. Are you also recommending a mileage tax biased with vehicle weight, efficiency, trailers, etc? This tends to get factored in with fuel consumption.
NW Iowa. Still at $2.49 as of yesterday.
There is a supply and demand element to everything in a free market. We pay at least a dime more for gasoline in my county ecsuse of the Canadian market even though there we two refineries here and our gasoline is delivered to stations by trucks, it never enters the pipeline.
Prices are somewhat controlled by the company that controls the pipeline, usually the largest company in the region.
And the illogical part is that today’s diesel engines are within a few percentage points of the efficiency of high efficiency fuel cells.
It was like a buck eighty when Obama took office.
And was it $2.49 at the end of June?
No. But it wasn’t appreciably more than that.
And what was it half a year before that?
Comparing to a short term bottom dip is no more honest that comparing to the top of short peak.
Then you must have found the cheapest gasoline in the entire nation back in June, when Iowa was averaging $3.60 a gallon.
I guess it depends on how you look at it. Average price nationally is about fifty cents lower than a year ago. That just doesn’t seem like a huge amount to me, personally.
Of course, I’m hopeful it drops a whole lot more.
I bought diesel yesterday for $3.25 at Willco on the Interstate. Across the street at Pilot it was $3.26
I expect the same was $3.15 or $3.20 at Murphy(walmart) or 3.10 at Murphy (Sams). I filled up not long ago at Sams for $3.05
Those prices are down from just shy of $4.00 in early ‘14 as I recall
I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.
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