rant-ultra low sulfur diesel cost ruining the economy

Before ultra low sulfur diesel was required by federal law in about 2006, diesel costs were the same or less than gasoline. That is the way it was for many years. Now, in the mid-atlantic area, gasoline is at 3.02/gal, diesel at 3.73. In many areas, it is no longer possible to purchase non-ULSD even for off road equipment. The cost of diesel ripples through our economy like nothing else. How many items that are purchased in our country were not transported by diesel power? Including ships, locomotives, 18 wheelers, and UPS and FEDEX delivery trucks, everything moves by diesel. I know personally of many small businesses that are suffering and teetering on the edge of going out of business over this issue. Is anyone else interested in working to change this, before our economy enters another depression? Thanks- Jack

Drill here.

Drill now.

Dean

And how do you suppose we change it???????

Many things drive the pump price of diesel. Most are over the head of the average Joe because they do not understand; (or even worse they think they understand because some buddy in a bar room told them about it what drives the priceing of diesel.

Related to what you're saying, because of government emission regulations here in Ohio 5 coal fired generating plants are going to close. And we all know about the shortage of oil. Several days this past week the sky was filled with jet contrails in all directions. That's when the thought struck me-- how much CO2 emissions and how much oil are those jets burning? Why are we being strangled on one hand but anything goes on the other?

John, you ask a good question. For many years the tendency of our country has been to add regulations, the cost of which has to be paid for ultimately by the average Joe that you refer to. Maybe if everyone that is being directly negatively affected would form a diesel fuel dependent industries assocation, we could have an effect. What if all the trucking associations, railroads, farmers, land clearing contractors, etc. joined together to roll back this legislation? If we don't succeed in rolling back a good deal of the job killing, small business killing laws and regulations, we are doomed as an economy, and ultimately, as a nation.

ULSD only causes a small portion of the pump price when compaired to LSD.
Even if we could some how get past the tree huggers and reverse the law; that price increase is here to stay. The updates to the refineries to provide ULSD have been made and will have to be paid for no matter if we use them or not.

Things like supply and demand cause a bigger markup on diesel than gas.
A refinery can only get so many gallons of diesel out of a barrel of oil. When demand of diesel goes up (from small pickups) this causes a surplus of gas and shortage of diesel. Gas price goes down and diesel price goes up.
A chain gas station sells gas and diesel. For the gas they have to compete with 3 other gas stations on that same corner to get you to buy gas from them. But to sell diesel they have to compete with the truck stop down the road that has 3 acres of concrete to pay for. The markup on gas becomes smaller while the price of diesel stays high.
For this next one we have to use some figures so do not hold me to the exact numbers. They are only a example to explain a point.
Go to a store and price ULSD clear for road use. Now price ULSD red for off road. The price differance is say 13 cents. But your state fuel tax on diesel is 18 cents. Where did the other 5 cents go. Do I really need to tell you; it was not the refenery.

Then we add speculation of wall street; the fact that only a few gallons of LSD left in a tanker when unloading can contaminate a whole load of ULSD; global demand of diesel; the price of $100 a barrell oil; the fact that most if not all big companies could care less what the price of diesel is because they just pass it on in the fuel surcharge; the U.S. population and the way they are today in needing a diesel pickup for a grocery getter just because the neighbor looks with envee.

I could go on and on............ but you get the idea. Way over the head of the average Joe.

Some years my son worked at a community grocery store. The owner was also a member of a local volunteer fire dept. He came in one day with two brass fittings for a fire truck, the price was something like $25-$30 each. He said, I could buy them at the hardware store for about $5-$6 each but the Govt. says they have to meet certain standards. Which basically meant that only certain companies manufactured them which drove the price up. I realize that there are many factors involved, but anytime regulations are set on something it simply gives the manufacturers license to raise prices. You will have to write volumes to convince me otherwise.

Just yesterdy in the Grand Rapids press saw that Consumers energy here in Michigan is shutting down 3 coal fired plants and putting on hold two that were planned as clean coal. This country is in REAL TROUBLE!!

(quoted from post at 21:25:04 12/04/11) Just yesterdy in the Grand Rapids press saw that Consumers energy here in Michigan is shutting down 3 coal fired plants and putting on hold two that were planned as clean coal. This country is in REAL TROUBLE!!

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nah just more coal to sell to china.

Read an article not to long ago in a trade magazine talking about all of the emission related crap being forced on the mfgs raising their costs, and ultimately being passed on to consumers driving the cost of eveything out of reach for many. The premise behing the article was the HUGE, ONGOING, cost of trying to make EVERY vehicle, etc meet such stringent emission requirements, and how wasteful it was basically doing it all one engine at a time. Not to mention the numerous, ongoing changes being demanded for the mfgs to meet the ever more stringent requirements formulated at a time when the technology to meet them hadn't even been discovered yet.

At the same time, given technology already available, there is a much easier way to reduce a much larger amount of 'emission' related gasses. Basically instead of every vehicle being it's own little 'emissions' plant on wheels, that there be large plants built to pull in those emissions and treat them all together. Just like there are storm drains running beside the roads to catch water, and sewer mains to carry waste to various centralized treatment areas, emissions could be done the same way. basically have the plants designed with huge vacuum pump drawing in emissions from grates at place like intersections, etc where vehicles are most likely to be setting at an idle and creating the most emissions, as well as at other strategic places along the various highway systems.

I can't remember any hard numbers but the study done came to the conclusion that a system of plants like this would capture a sizable amount more emission gasses than the individual vehicles themselves could ever hope to. Not to mention by doing it at a cental location certain of the gasses captured, or created in the treatment process would have commercial applications and could be sold to offset the cost of running the system. Sort of like they do now with the methane capture systems currently in use in old landfills around the country running generators and putting "free" power into the grid from what would otherwise be a 'greenhouse gas emission' that the EPA doesn't like. Not to mention that having the plants would also insure the reliability of the system because everything was better centralized and under control of a single 'controlling body' rather than having millions of individual vehicles needing constant inspection and upkeep and relying on John Q public to do it themsleves or through their mechanic........

I know what your asking about is just something to cut the cost of fuel, but this would have a impact on fuel right off the bat, and beyond that, the ripples through the economy caused by the cutting of expenses to the mfgs attempting to reach near impossible regulations on their products, etc, etc, etc, have the potential to be huge. Not to mention the fact that the air we breath would also have the potential to be cleaner than it is using the scheme the EPA currently uses to meet the existing goals.

In the old rulebook, 2 down quarters in a row is a recession. 4 down quarters is a depression. So we can say this is already the second year of one. Figures lie, liars figure.

The EPA looks at them refineries and big oil and all they can see is $$$$$$$$$$$$ added to their pocket by assessing fines. Big oil just passes it on. End user has to pay for it. There is more federal tax on diesel then gasoline because trucks are suppose to be harder on the roads.

We were one of and perhaps the last country to go with ULSD. GWB signed that in to law while he was president. Our diesel prices were below gasoline till we went ULSD. Once we changed to ULSD then all our diesel products went on the world market.

We can drill for more oil and it is also on the global market and global price we will pay. Since year 2000 everything we produce is for sale on the global market as long as it met standards of that market. ULSD was one of those changes that sent lots of our product overseas.

Keep in mind our food supply is on the global market as well. Run short on grains because of drought or weather related reasons and the top bidder will get that grain even if our shelves go empty. Today everything in the US is for sale to the top bidder. This makes it hard at times for us American citizen to compete against the Chinese Gov.

(quoted from post at 19:44:14 12/04/11) And how do you suppose we change it???????

Many things drive the pump price of diesel. Most are over the head of the average Joe because they do not understand; (or even worse they think they understand because some buddy in a bar room told them about it what drives the priceing of diesel.

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diesel is cheaper at the pumps here by about the same margin as it is more expensive to you folks. However, when I buy at the price set up for service members, it flips to being more expensive....

this barroom buddy says that being charged the higher prices is in close relation to the reason a dog licks his butt.... Because he can.....

You have a valid point there G man! One of the simular things I have asked about in the past,( and didn't get a clarification on,) is the practice of unloading jet fuel in the air, before landing, for saftey reasons. I was told that it evaporates before reaching earth, and therefore doesen't hurt anything??? I beg pardon!

Current fuel prices are cheaper than dirt. Why? Because what is the alternative? There's ain't one. Our whole economy is reliant on petroleum. And don't try to say that alternative fuels are the solution. I challenge you to produce an alternative fuel today without using petroleum.

Now, as for the cost of low-sulfur diesel, did it occur to you that there is a buried cost for high sulfur fuel? The difference is that you don't pay that price at the pump; rather, we ALL pay for the long-term effects of sulfur.

The EPA claims $70 billion/year in benefits from low-sulfur fuel versus $4 billion/year in cost. Assuming those estimates are optimistic, let's say it's $35B in benefits and $8B in cost. That's still a net income to the economy of 17 billion dollars per year.
Low sulfur fuel benefits

(quoted from post at 00:42:48 12/05/11) You have a valid point there G man! One of the simular things I have asked about in the past,( and didn't get a clarification on,) is the practice of unloading jet fuel in the air, before landing, for saftey reasons. I was told that it evaporates before reaching earth, and therefore doesen't hurt anything??? I beg pardon!

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Could you please clarify that?

Oh Mr EPA schill, pray tell, what does the sulfur emitted from a volcano, cost us? What's next, catalytic converters and scrubbers for volcanos? We all know that a volcano will put up more sulfur emissions, in minutes of eruption, than we emit, in a year.

Recession is when your neighbor loses his job.
Depression is when you lose your job.
Recovery is when external_link loses his job!

I am with ya but the amount of work you get out of diesel compared to gas out weight the cost difference... I don't understand folks that buy a diesel and run around unloaded other than the fuel efficiency has increased to out weigh the difference...

I made a 500 mile run yesterday to the mountains in NC,,, I had a 8K load to bring back home I chose a diesel cuzz I did not think their were enuff gas stations tween hear and their to keep my gas truck in fuel :shock:

Before anyone falls off their soapbox read today's CNN"s article about all the gasoline we are now exporting. Then explain it to me without all the doubletalk.

Its not only diesel, its the entire environmental movement that is destroying this country. I figure the Chinese are funding this global warming phenomenon. At one time you couldn't turn your TV on for 15 minutes without hearing global warming. Some group must be behind the propaganda. Nobody is going to spend so much money selling an idea unless it is designed to line their pockets.

It's not just the low-sulfur. Home heating oil is presently $3.80 per gallon. That's the old fashion high sulfur stuff and that's the price with no highway tax added. Farm diesel - off road and medium sulfur is also $3.80.

Gasoline here in NY is $3.70 per gallon WITH the highway tax and low-sulfur highway diesel is $4.30

So, gas at the pump is cheaper then heating oil. Makes you wonder what the heck is going on.

In a couple years, farm diesel and heating oil will be ultra-low sulfur.

The EPA says??? I am always amazed anyone gives any credence at all to ridiculous compilations of figures that project X number of people would die from this that or the other or that some specific action will prevent the same from happening, especially when those projections come from government deadbeat agencies intent on justifying and expanding their stranglehold on the US economy.

For some reason I remember buying heating oil back in 1970 @ 19 cents a gallon. $3.80 makes it 20x more expensive! I was making $4 an hour then, don't think wages are keeping up!

If you have cost/benefit data from a credible source, feel free to share it.

"We all know..." Do we? Do you have some hard data to share?

The last major volcanic eruption in the continental US was Mount St. Helens in 1980. The volcanoes may be silent, but cars and trucks haven't stopped running.

Sounds to me like we are exporting imported crude.
Did I miss something.?
http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/05/news/economy/gasoline_export/index.htm?hpt=hp_t2

Since CNN said it I have reason to doubt it.

(quoted from post at 09:47:16 12/05/11) If you have cost/benefit data from a credible source, feel free to share it.

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f course there is no credible data to share, because it doesn't exist.....the EPA "data" is all fairy dust, imagined, trumped up numbers.........there is NO hard data. Every time such is put forth, it is shortly found to be bogus. It just doesn't exist!!!!

Yes. Even in 1980 I sometimes bought left-over winter farm diesel in the Spring from Agway for 25 cents per gallon. It was half kerosene and few people wanted it when the weather got warm.

In 1970 you could buy a new small foreign car for a little over $1000. I guess you can't even buy a small bare-bones car for any price any more. Closest is probably over $12,000 now and will probably have features like muliple air bags, power steering, and much more.

I've only bought one new vehicle in my life. A new Nissan Sentra in 1987 for $5500. It was a piece of junk. It cured me though of ever thinking of buying new again. Today, just the sales tax on a new car or truck is more then I'd pay for total purchase cost.

The things that hurt our country:

EPA

DEQ

Treehuggers

Anti mining

Anti Oil Drilling

All Environmentalist

And present-day unions who practice legal extortion on the tax payers.

I agree with you, but for a different reason. If there is global warming (a big if). Volcanoes have been around since the earth was formed and haven't seemed to cause a problem mother nature couldn't correct. We can't control them but we sure can control emissions. I say do what we can and leave the rest to mother nature (and stay away from low lying property).

Here in Ohio, Diesel is selling (?) at over a Dollar higher than Gasoline..

We must ask if the Government is siphoning money from it, like they ARE from the Postal Service (and Social Security)..

We NEED to see an Audit of what is going to the Government in HIDDEN Taxes..

Money is disappearing from funds going to Nursing Homes ($100,000 per Nursing Home), so those fees are rising..
I am sure there are a slew of other sources the Government has tapped..

What do YOU think..??

Ron..

The EPA is anything but a disinterested credible source.

Dean

I agree.

We are is very serious trouble.

Dean

(quoted from post at 19:27:54 12/04/11) Drill here.

Drill now.

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...and not have any effect on the price of fuel for 10-20 years.

You make the claim, that reducing sulfur actually does something. I suggest that YOU sspply the proof, mr EPA schill!

The contribution of sulfur emissions to acid rain has been well-documented for at least forty years. And there are plenty of published studies showing that low-sulfur fuel reduces emissions. Just taking one at random from a google search, how about this NOAA study of emissions from a container ship?
NOAA shipping emissions study

No, Dean, the EPA is not a disinterested party. And credibility is relative; I'd put their credibility somewhere between Jerry Sandusky and Fox News.

But let's go back to the original post. Jack made the claim that ULSD is hurting the economy. Yet neither he nor anyone else has come up with any evidence to support that claim. The crux of his argument is that he'd rather have cheap fuel than expensive fuel. So I'm happy to read any arguments that support the idea that ULSD is hurting the economy. So far you've come up with bupkis.

We are exporting tons of diesel and everyone hasto have a new diesel pickup so the demand is high not hard to figure that one out pencil it out price of the engine and mileage youre better with a gasser and have lots less trouble. Thats what some owners are saying

SO2 is 2.21 times heavier than air. The high altitude plumes from volcanoes affect the global atmosphere. The S02 emissions from vehicles originate a few feet off the ground, and settle to the ground quickly due to their density.
If ULSD and expensive emissions systems on diesel engines are effective in reducing atmospheric CO2- we should be seeing a decrease in new diagnoses of asthma, not? But CDC statistics from 2004-2009 show a sharp increase in asthma diagnoses from 2007 to 2009, the time period that ULSD was introduced.

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr032.pdf

Even if the EPA is correct, and ULSD is "only" costing 4 billion a year additional, that is a four billion dollar tax on farmers, construction companies, truckers, railroads, ships and everyone that uses the products they transport and produce. I will take the EPA's 4 billion figure as hard evidence of harm to the economy. Where is any hard evidence of any benefit?

If you consider the additional cost of emissions systems for current diesel engines (several thousand dollars per engine), and the minimal impact on reducing atmospheric SO2, it is clear that the EPA's benefit analysis is not credible. Just one more reason that our country and way of life is fast fading away, unless we can reverse these trends.

Jack, I give you credit for coming back with a well thought-out response.

As for increased asthma diagnoses, I'd say that air pollution is just one factor. Changes in health care practices can account for the increased number of diagnoses, for example. The study you show didn't attempt to correlate the trends with environmental factors, or any other factors for that matter.

Regardless of whether most of the sulfur dioxide emitted by vehicles stays near the surface, the connection between SO2 emissions is well established. I've seen the effects of acid rain myself at the summit of Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina. See for yourself at the link below.

You say our way of life is fading. I say I want to leave my children and grandchildren a country that's fit to live in. Last week my wife saw a bald eagle in our front yard. If it weren't for the environmentalists and environmental regulation, eagles would have gone extinct twenty years ago. Do you really want to leave your grandchildren a country that's denuded of vegetation and devoid of wildlife?
Acid rain damage on Mt. Mitchell

(quoted from post at 04:12:11 12/06/11) Jack, I give you credit for coming back with a well thought-out response.

As for increased asthma diagnoses, I'd say that air pollution is just one factor. Changes in health care practices can account for the increased number of diagnoses, for example. The study you show didn't attempt to correlate the trends with environmental factors, or any other factors for that matter.

Regardless of whether most of the sulfur dioxide emitted by vehicles stays near the surface, the connection between SO2 emissions is well established. I've seen the effects of acid rain myself at the summit of Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina. See for yourself at the link below.

You say our way of life is fading. I say I want to leave my children and grandchildren a country that's fit to live in. Last week my wife saw a bald eagle in our front yard. If it weren't for the environmentalists and environmental regulation, eagles would have gone extinct twenty years ago. Do you really want to leave your grandchildren a country that's denuded of vegetation and devoid of wildlife?
Acid rain damage on Mt. Mitchell

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I grew up in a little factory town near Detroit. I remember the local branch of the Rouge river turning colors, orange one time. It caught fire occasionally. Never had any fish in it. That was in the 60's. After 40 years of envionmental work, it looks pretty good now. I read that they even have fish spawning there now. Every time I hear somebody go off against the EPA or envionmental issues, I think back to that smelly, dead, orange river. Some factory sites around here are so polluted that they have contaminated the water for miles around. I remember going to LA in the early 80's. You could darn near chew the air. Pollution is real, and without the EPA, our world would be a nastier place. Flame suit on.

Mark, thanks for your reply. If you read my posts, you won't find any generalized attacks on protecting the environment. I am sure that everyone that posted wants a good environment for future generations. I include the economic environment as part of that future. Poor nations are typically polluting nations. Based on my research, there have been no measurable health benefits traceable to ULSD. Below I am pasting a copy of the stated health benefits from the EPA website.

"In the long term, this program will result in more than $70 billion annually in environmental and public health benefits at a cost of $4 billion per year.

Health benefits will include the annual prevention of:

8,300 premature deaths
5,500 cases of chronic bronchitis
17,600 cases of acute bronchitis in children
360,000 cases of respiratory symptoms in asthmatic children
1.5 million lost work days
7,100 hospital visits
2,400 emergency room visits for asthma"

Does the EPA monitor these health conditions to determine whether ULSD is producing these results? If there is any independently verifiable measurable data to prove this, I will change my thinking. The additional cost of ULSD is at least 4 billion annually, and now the Tier IV emissions equipment is adding anywhere from 1% (EPA estimate) to 10% (AG equipment manufacturer estimate) to the cost of all new diesel powered equipment. This additional cost is in the tens of billions to the economy annually. Since businesses pass along the cost of taxes and regulation to their customers, the 20-50 billion annual cost of ULSD and tier 4 has to be paid for by end users of goods and services. If businesses are not able to sell their products and services at the increased price levels, they will cease operations, and their employees will lose their jobs. I believe that is what we are seeing. There are more stringent emissions requirements coming for diesels in 2014.



Acid rain will always be present as long as there is volcanic activity somewhere in the world.