Lately I've been seeing a very steep premium for diesel fuel prices over the cost of regular gasoline. One of the pricier stations had regular for $2.25 and diesel for $2.95. Thats a 31% premium. Of course thats just one example.
I found historical prices from the EIA . The most recent numbers as of Feb 2nd (as I write this) says that the national average for gas is $1.98 and $2.86 for diesel. Thats a hefty 44% premium for diesel. I the EIA data and pulled out just the prices from the first week of each month. Below is the trend showing the difference in prices for diesel over gasoline :
The current difference is abnormally high. You can see the large spike for the most recent data which is way off the chart compared to normal. Usually the % difference is less than 20% but now its hit over 40%.
You can also see that it varies seasonally. I plotted monthly prices for a few years 1995 to 2000 to see how the difference varies month to month.
Generally diesel is around 5-10% higher than gas in the winter and then drops to ~5% cheaper
Overall diesel averages about 6% higher than gasoline over the long run. The mean and median are both 6%.
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