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Re: diesel as by-product.
Actually, distillation from crude oil creates many products in a continuous process. Think of it this way:
Crude oil enters at the bottom of a long pipe and is heated. As it travels up the pipe, it becomes lighter. So if you siphon it off at a lower level, you get kerosene and diesel. A little higher and you get gasoline. Higher still, and you get lighter distilates. So in order to make gasoline, you in effect are not siphoning off the distilate result until it "passes" the diesel point. All gasoline that is produced counld technically be siphoned off as diesel. Therefore it is cheaper (requires less energy) to produce diesel.
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