It is a price difference that we had almost forgotten. Since the beginning of February, the price of diesel has fallen below the price of gasoline at the pump, ending almost a year of an abnormal period in which the curves reversed.
A growing gap
And from an initially insignificant price difference in 2023, this one is becoming more and more significant: 16 cents less for a liter of diesel in the latest weekly pump price survey.
A historically high difference. Indeed, it is necessary to go back to October 2016 to find such a difference, of 16 euro cents, in the pump price between diesel and gasoline in France.
Except precisely during this period, after the start of the Russian invasion in Ukraine… where diesel ended up with a price per liter up to 27 cents more expensive (in October 2022) than gasoline.
An atypical situation, already with a difference in taxation compared to gasoline in France:
“There is 10 cents more tax on gasoline compared to diesel if we add the difference of TICPE and VAT,” recalls Olivier Gantois, president of the Ufip (French Union of Petroleum Industries).
The limited impact of the embargo on Russian diesel
Diesel more expensive than gasoline was still the case at the beginning of the year. And at the time, we feared above all the start of the total embargo on Russian diesel, decided in 2022 but only applied as of February 4, 2023, which would further increase the gap between the two fuels.
On paper, fears were justified:
“Russia exported 3.5 million barrels of diesel per day and this Russian diesel represented 50% of imports in Europe, 30% in France”, emphasizes Olivier Gantois.
Except that, in fact, it is precisely since February that the price of diesel has fallen below that of gasoline, with a widening gap ever since.
“First of all, the markets saw that diesel could be imported from suppliers other than Russia. It also seems that the Russians export their diesel to other countries, which do not apply the embargo and can therefore re-export it to European countries. Finally, it is the start of the “driving season” in the United States, with a demand for gasoline that increases in this period from April-May to the beginning of July”, explains Olivier Gantois.
Added to this range of reasons is the “structural tendency to shift part of consumption from diesel to gasoline”, which modifies the balance of demand between both fuels. Diesel still accounts for three quarters of fuel consumption in France.
“A slow but inevitable ‘de-dieselization’, points out Olivier Gantois, between 2021 and 2022, gasoline consumption increased by 11% and diesel consumption decreased by 1%.”
Source: BFM TV
