Neither. Production costs are slightly lower and taxes slightly higher but not enough to account for the difference in price. Some states have higher additional state taxes on diesel (California, Washington) Although diesel prices fluctuate separately from gasoline prices and have sometimes been lower, the current prices are higher in the USA because of supply and demand. Building either a diesel or a gasoline refining plant is a big long term project so the supply only changes gradually.

Basically, the higher cost is due to a gradual increase in demand for diesel with more people trying to save fuel with the more efficient (and recently improved) diesel engines, especially in the larger pickup trucks. There has not been a matching increase in production.

It is unfortunate that there has not been more effort to encourage diesel as there has in Europe. Electric, fuel cell and other prospective technologies pretty clearly will not do the job for most transportation needs. Diesel engines can without modification be made completely green by using Biodiesel fuel, which is much more efficient to produce than ethanol. But biodiesel has also not gotten the support it should, again Europe is ahead of the USA. European countries give tax and other incentives to diesel and biodiesel because they are even more concerned about the effects of oil imports on their economies.

The current technology (but not currently offered by car manufacturers) that is the ideal long term solution for transportation is the plug-in electric hybrid diesel running on biodiesel. This combination would have more than sufficient range, great mileage, and be carbon neutral (if the rest of the chain was similarly powered). The only drawback is moderately increased initial cost of the car,
Source(s):
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/gdu/gasdiesel.asp
http://www.eia.doe.gov/bookshelf/brochures/diesel/index.html

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