Any thoughts on the fuel costs?

I was tanking up the other day. The Caravan fortunately and not the truck (33 gallons) when I noticed that diesel was about $0.20 less than regular. That seemed unusual from my recollection and got me wondering. So, I found this site by our government titled Energy Information Administration.

You can down load all sorts of spread sheets. I picked the ones that had pricing and gallons sold in total and by US refiners.

First the total sold.
The black line is gasoline, the red is diesel. Both are millions of gallons times 100.

Rather slow rising trends here. Infact, our gasoline use has only risen 39.53% from March 1994 to a peak in June 2005 at 39.53. Diesel peaked at 14.33 in June 2006. An increase from March 1994 of 53.1%.

Next is US refiners output.
Again., black is gasoline, red diesel in million of gallons times 100.

Notice the decrease? Interesting that diesel was declining first. Gasoline output peaks at 6.54 in the last quarter of 1998 and the same in June 2001. It comes close in June 2002 at 6.49. The grandaddy is June 2003 at 6.68. From there it’s down hill to levels below the June 1996; 5.74 in March of this year, 5.78 in June 1996. Diesel peaks at 2.44 in March 2001 and never sees past 2.0 after March 2002. The only other time we saw less than 2.0 was December of 1994.
Did we suddenly start loosing refineries? We were putting out more every year until “everything changed”. Hummmmmmmmmmm.

Here is the world crude oil price by year.
It does look like the gasoline and diesel price lines. Your thoughts?