And finally, in portfolio management, we expect comparable segment profit in 2015 to last year. We’ll have continued strong performance from Rolls Royce Jet Engine Leasing Venture and steady performance of the marine assets within this segment. So the net effect of all this is along with the expectation of slightly lower SG&A in 2015 that leads to our earnings guidance of 5.15 to 5.35 per diluted share. That would be another record earnings per share year for GATX and should result in return on equity approaching 17%. So it would be outstanding performance again.
So let’s turn to that tank car regulatory update. It’s short this time because it’s real — there is no real development here. As you may remember, the comments the notice of close rail making were due at September. PHMSA reportedly received thousands of comments. I know they spent the interim period trying to finalize their new rules and they were meeting with various interested parties to understand their comments that were submitted. They were trying to harmonize with Transport Canada, but just here as a latest public schedule has the rule being spent on the at the end of January. The clearance is expected by April 30th with the rule finalized and published by mid-May. So, we’ll obviously monitor that situation closely. But any discussion on the form of the final rule or the time frames involved is really pure speculation at this point.
And the final topic before we open the call to questions is to address the inquiries that we’re receiving about the effect of the dramatically lower crude prices and its effect on our lease fleet. You know as you know, if you’ve listened to our calls over the last few years, we’ve been a relative cautionary voice really relatively speaking the industry about whether it make sense to aggressively deploy tank cars and crude by rail service. And as discussed on prior calls, our analysis has always suggested that the market could become overbuilt for a variety of reasons.
We have talked about potential pipeline construction excess manufacturing capacity for tank cars, we’ve talked about the volatility of both the absolute price of the crude and the WTI brand differentials. There are a number of factors here. And although we discuss that risk of crude price volatility, we certainly didn’t predict or anticipate this recent free fall in crude prices. But it was one of the reasons that our strategy has been to not aggressively pursue this crude by rail business and to instead use that high demand environment created by crude by rail to continue to diversify our tank car fleet across the variety of high quality customers and commodities and car types and to lock up those attractive rates for a long period.
So at the end of 2014, we only have 2,500 cars in crude by rail service in North America none in Europe. So direct crude by rail exposure comprises about 1.7% the worldwide fleet, but having said that petroleum customers related commodities are obviously an important source of GATX’s revenue worldwide, in fact about 18% of our cars are North America are petroleum related customers. For example we owned another 2300 cars are on ethanol service in North America, we have approximately 3100 cars of service, a big part of our European tank cars leaded in the fine product service. So, naturally we do have an interest in what the effect of these lower crude prices will be. But, once again let me start by saying that our North American tank car fleet is essentially a 100% utilized right now, and as I said these cars leased at historically high rates for very long average term. And today, we have received no indication from any customers that they intend to return their cars in fact we are out there asking them, if they feel that they are a long cars right now given the situation hint they want us to remarket them and no one has taken us up on that offer.
