Could Diesel shortage lead to a surplus of Petrol?

Belfast

There is a growing shortage of Diesel.

The Goverment has responed by cutting the purchase price of Diesel cars and road tax for Diesel cars because they produce less CO2.

A barrel of oil cannot be turn in to all Diesel.

For every barrel of Oil refined there is a percentage will be petrol even if you only want Diesel.

as demand for Diesel goes up more oil has to be refined, possible leading to a surplus of petrol.

This happen when mineral oil was first refined.
the main product they wanted was paraffin to replace whale oil in lamps.

Petrol was considered a useless by product and was dumped until the petrol engine was invented.

The EU produce more Petrol than it needs and is short of Diesel.

The surplus is exported to America and Diesel is imported for Russia to help with the shortage.

Victor

The percentage of any particular consitutent in a barrel of oil can be manipulated through catalyic cracking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracking_(chemistry)

AngryHippie

I know what you are getting at, Most refineries in Europe are geared to produce Petrol in quantity, and to modify them to meet diesel demands would cost something of the order of 20 Billion Euro, The companies in control of the refineries are reluctant to spend this money as the supply in the coming years may not realize the capital investment required, So we have a massive over production capacity for current petrol demands, and a deficit of Diesel production. Unfortunately, this will not lead to a drop in Petrol cost, merely an increase in diesel costs. Bizarre.
Its a shame as some diesel engines are reaching staggering levels of efficiency in recent years.

probe

Europe has been producing a surplus of gasoline for years, and exporting it to North America.

The answer is to reconfigure the refineries to produce a greater portion of middle distillates (diesel, heating oil and jet fuel) from each barrel of oil.

The oil companies haven't bothered to do this because they can make more money by not investing in updating their refining capacity and letting the price of diesel rise. This won't lead to a fall in the price of gasoline, because most of this cost is taxation and the crude oil price.

They have forced the oil refiners to clean up their fuels by legislative measures in the past. Perhaps they need more legislation to force European refiners to modernise their refineries to produce lower CO2 fuels - eg diesel rather than gasoline?

If they do nothing, the additional diesel fuel price + the extra capital cost of a diesel vehicle will cancel out any tax incentives offered to people who buy diesel vehicles.

.probe

Belfast

good page on the subject
AutoblogGreen
So just why is diesel so much more expensive than gasoline now?
http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:4P28YNBCRp4J:www.autobloggreen.com/2008/04/16/so-just-why-is-diesel-so-much-more-expensive-than-gasoline-now/+increasing+proportion+of+diesel+versus+petrol+from+barrel+of+oil&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=ie