Roland Perry wrote:
In message , at
20:57:45 on Mon, 29 Aug 2005, Martin Underwood
remarked:
For some reason, the rises in the price of fuel over the past few
months have affected diesel prices more than petrol: going back a
few years, diesel used to be slightly cheaper than petrol, then it
drew level and became 1-2 pence/litre more expensive, but stilll
cheaper than leaded or lead-replacement petrol; now it's
consistently the most expensive fuel on the forecourt, typically 5
pence/litre more than unleaded. Since the fuel duty (a fixed rate
that's not dependent on the raw material cost) hasn't changed, I'm
not sure what's happened.

When oil is refined, it's expensive to change the types of fuel that
are produced (away from some "natural" mix of petrol/diesel etc). I
expect
that the demand for diesel has increased enormously, so the price rise
reflects a relative scarcity.

I seem to recall mention of a shift in Treasury policy on fuel taxation so
that they get the same amount of cash per mile from the motorist regardless
of fuel used. Diesel using less fuel per mile gets taxed more.

No I don't have a link to confirm that.