RED diesel question?

MetalChicken · Apr 26, 2005

Here in the UK red diesel is for agricultural vehicles only. I get it delivered 100 gallons at a time by my local oil company who also supply my heating oil.
the price difference is somewhat greater over here. White diesel (taxed) is about £3.80/gallon ($6.80) while red diesel is about 95p/gallon ($1.70) - big incentive.

KubotaTrax · May 19, 2005

I dont mean to rain on anyone. But, you men are talking about home heating oil and off road diesel.
Home heating oil and oil for a diesel engine IS NOT THE SAME.
The home heating oil lacks a lubricating agent which is vital for lubrication of the high pressure pump. Using it in my tractor or truck only means I'll be buying a new injector pump which runs about $1500 + labor.
I didn't mean to shout, Just wanted to let you know that using home heating oil in your baby could be a problem.

As for the off road diesel, It just has dye in it and will run great in any diesel engine and it's 1/4 off the road diesel price.
Use it if you can get it ( only in your tractor) and save the money to buy steel to make goodys for your tractor /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
my 2cent.

MikePA · May 19, 2005

Home heating oil and oil for a diesel engine IS NOT THE SAME. 
No offense, but this has been discussed before and in some places in the country home heating oil and diesel fuel are the same. Many TBNers have been told this directly from their fuel distributor.

SkyPup · May 19, 2005

The are five PADD (Petroleum Administration Defense Districts) districts in the US and have been ever since they were set up at the end of WWII. Each different one has different diesel fuel quality due to presence or lack of refineries, lack or presence of pipelines, lack or presence of shipping and ports, etc.

The PADD I district comprises the east coast of the USA and has three subdistricts. Subdistrict IA is (New England): Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont.
Subdistrict IB is (Central Atlantic): Delaware, District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania.

These two subdistrict have about the worst (low quality of middle distillates in general) diesel fuel due to the large amount of heating oil needed there during the winter months and the lack of refining capacity. Most any middle distillate you purchase in these markets is on the low end of the quality scale unless it is a speciality refined product like Sprague's products for the ULSD markets in high pollution areas (new York City, Boston, etc.)

MadReferee · May 19, 2005

Interesting, but what does it mean if, in fact, that's true?

Define low end of the quality scale? What does that mean? Where can I obtain additional information regarding this?

Are there more fuel related engine problems in the northeast than elsewhere? Probably not.

Milions of gallons of diesel are sold in the northeast every day. If there was such a quality issue one would think that there would be plenty of complaints. I have heard of none of the scale that your statement suggests.

So, are we going to start arguing that "my diesel is better than yours"? Probably. /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

SkyPup · May 19, 2005

The entire New England PADD IA IB districts and the PADD IV district (Rocky Mountain States) have the lowest quality of middle fuel supply in the US, PADD V (California) and PADD III (Gulf Coast) have the highest. The reasons are a multitude of legislative and economical factors too long to list here, but it has been this way for >60 years now.

As I stated, the PADD districts were designiated after WWII as a matter of national defense to delegate the distribution of natural resources. I am surprised you are unaware of this fundamental fact about petroleum products.

Btw, where you are in N.H., most of the diesel fuel you get comes from the HESS-Venezuela joint plant in the Virgin Islands as they supply 85% of the entire East Coast middle distillate....

"Over 36% of U.S. diesel imports come from PDVSA refineries when including PDVSA's 50% "Hovensa" joint-venture refinery (with Hess) in Virgin Islands. Canada accounts for 41% of U.S. diesel imports and Russia, 7.6%. No other single country accounts for even 1% of U.S. diesel imports."

Jimbrown · May 19, 2005

Sky Pup. Got a question. I am in Arizona. Up untill last year it seems all our fuel came from California and was pretty much price fixed. Last year a big compnay Fuel City put in a few stores and dropped the price a couple of cents. However the trucks I see delivering to Fuel City seem to be from Coastal and coming out of Elpaso. Also the military gets its fuel out of El paso. Is that posible to cross the districts like that?

SkyPup · May 19, 2005

Different districts have differents standards and PADD V is the absolute most strict of them all, I would imagine cross distribtion in your district would be next to nothing, ie <2%.

MadReferee · May 19, 2005

( As I stated, the PADD districts were designiated after WWII as a matter of national defense to delegate the distribution of natural resources. I am surprised you are unaware of this fundamental fact about petroleum products. )

Very few people are, probably less than 1 in a million.

I live in southern NH. All of our fuel comes from the Revere (Boston) terminal. If you get further north towards Concord NH the fuel comes from the Portland Maine terminal. I know the fuel (gasoline at least) is different from both terminals due to clean air requirements. BTW, I used to own my own service station.

However, my off-road distributor imports high cetane off-road diesel from Canada thru a distribution point in upstate NY.

What I object to is your use of the term "Low quality". It is very misleading and implies that the fuel sold here in the northeast is crap. It's not. I am not a chemical engineer so I can't say for sure what the differences are but "low quality" is a very poor term to use to describe it.

SkyPup · May 19, 2005

Low quality simply means diesel fuel that is not straight cut from sweet crudes but instead is hydrocracked from sour crude grades, thereby being much lower in paraffin content and natural cetane rating and much higher is aromatic content, and in the case of red dyed much higher in sulfur concentrations. All of these parameters are the hallmark of low quality diesel fuels found in your region.