By Stephanie Abbajay

The smell of French fries and onion rings wafts over me and I am momentarily overcome with hunger. Then I remember where I am. I’m not in the parking lot of McDonald’s, I’m in my driveway, and the smell of fried foods is coming from the exhaust of my car.

Infuriated with the outrageous price of diesel fuel, my intrepid husband, a former diesel mechanic turned furniture craftsman, decided he simply wasn’t going to take it anymore. So he converted my 22-year-old Mercedes diesel sedan to run on used vegetable oil. Ditto his big Dodge truck. Now, every time we start our vehicles or idle at a stoplight, the smell of fried foods permeates the air around us.

When we moved out here from Washington, D.C. five years ago, diesel was about $1 a gallon. Now, it’s right around $4. In January, when it hit $3.75 and never went back down, my husband had had enough and converted both our vehicles to run on used vegetable oil. Now, we were already pretty green out here on the farm. We made the switch to CFLs. We heat our house with scrap wood from Stine Woodworking, my husband’s environmentally-correct furniture business. Our countertops are lined with various receptacles to hold compost materials and scraps for the chickens, cats and dogs. Everything gets used, reused or turned into energy.

But the switch to running our vehicles on used vegetable oil is a new high, or low, depending on how you look at it. However, it must be said that the switch had less to do with being green and much, much, more to do with saving money. But isn’t it nice when those two interests can dovetail?

It came down to this: My husband has watched, as I am sure all diesel users out there have, as the price of diesel skyrocketed past gasoline. Until a few years ago, diesel used to cost much, much less than gas. In 1990, the average price of gasoline was $1.16 per gallon, while the average cost of diesel was 73 cents per gallon. In 2002, the average cost of gasoline was $1.36 per gallon, while the average cost of diesel was 76 cents per gallon. But that all changed in 2005 when diesel began to outpace gasoline. In 2005, the average cost of gasoline was $1.87 while the average cost of diesel was $1.95. Diesel hasn’t cost less than gasoline since, and it probably won’t ever again.

And why is that? All diesel users ask the same question: Why isn’t diesel cheaper than gasoline? Enter that phrase in Google and you get pages of conspiracy-minded blogs and opinions that range from blame George Bush for the war in Iraq to blame Al Gore for his global warming crusade. But you also get some very informative sites, the best of which is the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration website, HYPERLINK "http://www.eia.doe.gov" www.eia.doe.gov.

Since both gasoline and diesel fuels are made from crude oil, and crude is now over $100 a barrel, it stands to reason that the price of all fuels (as well as other products made from crude) will go up accordingly. But diesel used to cost far less than gasoline because diesel uses less crude in its production and its refining costs were lower. Now, however, the refining costs of diesel are higher because of EPA-mandated reductions in the sulfur content of that fuel. By June 1, 2006, 80 percent of the on-highway diesel fuel sold in the U.S. had to be Ultra-Low Sulfur Diesel (ULSD) and by December 1, 2010, all on-highway diesel fuel must be ULSD. And new, tighter standards for off-highway (farm) consumption started to phase in last year.

Those regulations have led to higher refining costs. In the past few years, the government also began to tax diesel at a higher rate (though the EIA doesn’t say why) and companies started to charge more to transport the new ULSD to safeguard the integrity of the product; according to the EIA, if a shipment of ULSD is contaminated by mingling with higher sulfate fuels it has to be shipped back and refined again.

According to the EIA, here’s the breakdown of the cost of a gallon of gasoline: 68 percent for crude oil, 13 percent for taxes, 11 percent for distribution and marketing and 8 percent for refining costs. And here is diesel’s breakdown: 62 percent for crude oil, 15 percent for refining, 14 percent for taxes and 9 percent for distribution and marketing. Diesel uses less crude but it is taxed at a higher rate and now costs more to refine and distribute.

On March 24, the EIA reported that the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. was $3.25, up .64 cents from March 2007. The average price of diesel was $3.98, up – brace yourselves -- $1.31 from the average price in March 2007. And, according to the EIA and other industry analysts say diesel users shouldn’t expect the price to go down anytime soon. Increased global demand, stricter EPA standards and the high price of crude all conspire to keep the price of diesel very high.

So what’s a diesel user to do? Grin and bear it? Complain to your congressman? Boycott Shell? Maybe instead of dumping that oil in the trash, you should save it and solve your own diesel dilemma. It’s stinky, but effective.

Stephanie Abbajay lives on a 40-acre farm in Dow, Illinois She is a columnist for the Jersey County Journal and freelance writer.