Abstract Diesel is produced conventionally by distilling crude oil which also results in lower value heavy distillates. Recently, complex refineries have higher value-added diesel from these heavy distillates. However, this requires additional energy. Hence, it is interesting to evaluate what effect the economic value addition has on the use of non-renewable resources and greenhouse gas emissions. This study was conducted to compare the gate-to-gate energy related impacts i.e. Global Warming Potential (GWP) and Abiotic resource Depletion Potential (ADP) between straight run diesel (S-HSD), produced by a simple refinery and cracked diesel (C-HSD), produced by a complex. The results showed that the C-HSD required more energy than the S-HSD because of the energy used by the additional processes. 1 L of the S-HSD generated 0.048 kg CO2 eq while that of the C-HSD generated 0.372 kg CO2 eq. In contrast, the C-HSD has a lower ADP than the S-HSD proving that the production of diesel from the heavy distillate indeed helps conserve natural resources. 1 L of the S-HSD generated 0.022 kg Sb eq. while that of the C-HSD generated 0.017 kg Sb eq. Producing the C-HSD helps conserve natural resources but has higher GWP than the S-HSD. However, there are possibilities to reduce GHG emissions from the C-HSD production by energy efficiency improvement.