Welcome to the forum. That's an interesting point about diesel being a "strategic" resource. I'd agree that we won't see diesel being phased out anytime soon.
Thanks!
Regarding diesel not going away due to strategic resource status - its not even so nefarious as this. From a given barrel of oil, there is a set mix of compounds. Simple distillation results in separating this by boiling point, so the cheapest refining results in a fixed mix of fuels. To deviate from this takes extra processes (hydro-cracking, for instance) which add considerable to the cost. This means there is a balance point of gasoline to diesel production that is always being pushed towards, as deviating from that price point results in the higher demand fuel being priced higher, causing a shift away from it.
Granted. Though cracking and fracking is generally not applied to strive for a specific amount of gas and diesel but rather based on the origin of the crude. The sweetest crude (i.e. north sea) will generally be the most expensive, for which reason it just gets distilled and still yields a high amount of light hydrocarbons like gas, diesel and jet. A heavier crude oth, will generally be cheaper, but yield a smaller amount of light fuels, but since it was cheaper to begin with, it's enconomically viable, up to a point, to refine it further. Still, this type of crude and further refining will produce more heavy fuel and tar which needs to be sold for a profit in order to make whole wheel turn (RE bunker C a few pages up I think).
Diesel is more expensive in the US for several reasons. The first and main reason is supply and demand. Most foreign countries are more dependant on distillate fuel, driving up demand. A 42 gallon barrel of crude typically yields about 20 gals. of gas and 11 gals. of distillate- which affects supply. D2 and home heating oil are also essentially the same distillate which drives up demand in the colder months.
Another factor is the additional refining required to produce ULSD drives up production costs.
Lastly fuel taxes on D2 are about $.06 more per gallon than the tax on gasoline.
The first thing I'd like to point out is that you may or may not be correct about most foreign countries being more dependant on distillate. I would mainly agree with that statement though I'd add that the same holds true for the US (see below). And based on this, probably the main reason why gas is more expensive in said countries is heavier taxation (being that it is a consumer fuel). A perfect example is 100LL vs Jet A1 in Germany. A liter of 100LL sells for around 3€ at most airports (being leaded, it's already more expensive to produce, transport and store and has like 100% more taxes on it, being a fuel for the rich who fly in 30 to 40 year old GA acft) and €1.6 for Jet A1 because there's basically no tax at all applied to it. This translates to about €11 a gallon for 100LL and €6 for A1 which is on par with international prices.
Anyways, I did a little digging and came with the following figures:
total average fuel consumption for transport in 2014 was 368 million gallons a day. 56% out of that was gas, 22% diesel and 11% jet fuel. The remaining being other energy sources (electricity, natural gas, biofuels, etc).
I couldn't dig up the number for 2014, but in whitepaper published by a USAF Col. claimed that in 06 the DOD consumed 12.6 million gallons of distillate. I was able to dig up a trending graphic which goes out to 2012 that seems to tell that that number as stayed more or less the same since 2003.
In any case, 33% of distillate for transport, plus another 3 or 4% for millitary, rounds up to 37%. That number is considerably higher than the 11 to 42 ratio you posted.
This is why I say it's a strategic resource.
Trains, trucks and ships running on light fuels (i.e. diesel) already have the lowest specific fuel consumption possible. Same goes for commercial aviation, where the trend has been to lower fuel consumption as much as possible, being that it's the number one cost of any commercial flight op.
The same could be said, up to a point, about the military. So what you end up with is:
A transport industry and military that 'need' X amount of distillate. What do you do? You produce X amount of distillate! Side effect, you have Y amount of gas. This Y amount of gas, as you correctly posted, is greater than the amount distillate, which is why gas is mainly cheaper in the US.
