How comes diesel is now 10p a litre more than petrol?

Funnily enough, I read in a copy of Auto Express (who incidentally spoke to some fuel representative person) that its because the majority of the UK's refineries (sp?) were built in the 70's mainly to produce petrol and not as much diesel. Thus the increased cost is to "modify them to meet demand"

Which of course is probably a load of cobblers.
 
ethos said:
I thought shell make something silly like £12.72bn profit last year? They can't sell that many kit-kats ;):D
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The shell group probably did, due to soaring oil prices. Retail fuel is purely a halo for the brand as Simon has said, it makes nothing, retail fuel is as cheap as it possibly can be.
 
Hasn't diesel tax increased faster than petrol tax?

Diesels horrible stuff anyway and produces far more toxic pollutants than petrol. Tax should be dramatically increased to get people back to petrol.

ethos said:
I thought shell make something silly like £12.72bn profit last year? They can't sell that many kit-kats ;):D
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How has the government brainwashed you and so many other people?
The amount oil companies make per litre is very small and many times less than pretty much any other market. it's just there are few petrol companies and they sell so much product. It's the governments tax which makes your petrol so costly. The oil companies are not to blame.
 
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Gaijin said:
Funnily enough, I read in a copy of Auto Express (who incidentally spoke to some fuel representative person) that its because the majority of the UK's refineries (sp?) were built in the 70's mainly to produce petrol and not as much diesel. Thus the increased cost is to "modify them to meet demand"

Which of course is probably a load of cobblers.
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I think that is a load of rubbish TBH. My dad worked for Esso for 25 odd years and hes told me in the past how deisel and aviation kerosene can be turned from one into the other without much trouble. The refinaries will have always produced the same ratio of kerosene to petrol in relation to the crude put in.
 
Dandle said:
I think that is a load of rubbish TBH. My dad worked for Esso for 25 odd years and hes told me in the past how deisel and aviation kerosene can be turned from one into the other without much trouble. The refinaries will have always produced the same ratio of kerosene to petrol in relation to the crude put in.
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Thats cos they are heavier oil fuels that you can crack into shorter chain organics, like petrol or parrafin, you can't join petrol quite as easily to make a longer chain diesel hydrocarbon molecule.

Glad to see you took a real interest in what your Dad was saying and missed the GCSE science bit about distillation towers. :P
 
Jonnycoupe said:
Well starting a post like that wasn't the best way to lead into a rather misunderstood reasoning of the status of UK refinary capability was it. Hence my comment.
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In what way was my post rather misleading or misunderstood? And in what way do you seem to have a better understanding of the UK refining industry than what I have? I mearly gave a fact that deisel isnt a by product of petrol its the other way around along with many other oils.( i admit a lot of my knowledge is from my dads 25yrs at the West London depot for shell and esso but it doesnt mean im an idiot).
 
Dandle said:
In what way was my post rather misleading or misunderstood? And in what way do you seem to have a better understanding of the UK refining industry than what I have? I mearly gave a fact that deisel isnt a by product of petrol its the other way around along with many other oils.( i admit a lot of my knowledge is from my dads 25yrs at the West London depot for shell and esso but it doesnt mean im an idiot).
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You can't just make more diesel
 
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