This post is likely to be unpopular but please don't kill the messenger!
:mafia20smile:
I work in the oil transportation biz and spend a lot of time looking at supply/demand in various parts of the world so I can say with a good degree of confidence that the cost of diesel relative to gasoline does not have anything to do with less Americans using it.
Distillate (diesel, gasoil, jet, kerosene) is the part of the oil barrel that drives commerce and most of the world outside America uses for the majority of its transportation needs. The demand destruction in the USA in the last year or so has been taken up by demand growth in developing economies, particularly those who subsidize their oil, as their citizens have not felt the pain as oil prices have risen and have happily kept consuming.
The particularly unpleasant thing is diesel is cheap here by global standards, both my wife and I drove diesel vehicles in the UK until we moved back recently and we were paying nearly $10 per gallon by the time we left. We also got up to 60 mpg from my wife's diesel Saab 9-3 on trips so compared to gas it was much more economical if you drove any kind of mileage, thus most of the vehicles were diesel.
I also don't think there is sufficient demand for a lot of diesel cars in the USA (yet), we like our big cars and we like them with big powerful engines with a lot of punch. (and I am no different thus the shelby and my F150...)
When we lived in the UK we had no problem with my pickup (2.5L TD) or my wife's Saab (2.4L TD) but I can tell you that you had to get used to the turbo lag. My F-150 and my wife's SUV are both much better off the line and I would really feel the difference now if I went back. That said, I do find it amazing that you can't even buy the Saab in the USA with the engine we had in ours, it was a really good set up and although it wasn't a dragster it did pretty well particularly once you were at highway speeds.
The good news for the global consumer is there is a lot of refining capacity coming on line early next year, one really big one in India and 3 more in China so this in conjunction with the global economic slowdown should help bring some of the refining margins down. I think crude is destined for $100 per barrel and could go as low as $85 for a short while but some OPEC members are already making noise about protecting a floor of $100 per barrel
so I don't know how far below this level we are likely to see and demand is also likely to start to recover at around these price levels.
By the way as someone said in a previous post while our US refineries built to maximize gasoline production from the barrel, they are currently doing their best to maximizing distillate production right now because (until the last week or so) gasoline margins were dismal and there was a lot more money to be made making distillate.
Its a crazy world out there at the moment!