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A barrel is one of several
units of volume A unit of volume is a unit of measurement for measuring volume or capacity, the extent of an object or space in three dimensions. Units of capacity may be used to specify the volume of fluids or bulk goods, for example water, rice, sugar, grain o ...
applied in various contexts; there are dry barrels, fluid barrels (such as the U.K. beer barrel and U.S. beer barrel), oil barrels, and so forth. For historical reasons the volumes of some barrel units are roughly double the volumes of others; volumes in common use range approximately from . In many connections the term is used almost interchangeably with ''barrel''. Since medieval times the term as a unit of measure has had various meanings throughout Europe, ranging from about 100 litres to about 1,000 litres. The name was derived in medieval times from the
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
, of unknown origin, but still in use, both in French and as derivations in many other languages such as Italian, Polish, and Spanish. In most countries such usage is obsolescent, increasingly superseded by
SI units The International System of Units, known by the international abbreviation SI in all languages and sometimes pleonastically as the SI system, is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most widely used system of measurement. ...
. As a result, the meaning of corresponding words and related concepts (vat, cask, keg etc.) in other languages often refers to a physical container rather than a known measure. In the international oil market context, however, prices in
United States dollar The United States dollar ( symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the officia ...
s per barrel are commonly used, and the term is variously translated, often to derivations of the
Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through ...
/ Teutonic root ''fat'' (for example ''vat'' or ''Fass''). In other commercial connections, barrel sizes such as beer keg volumes also are standardised in many countries.


Dry goods in the US

* US dry barrel: **Defined as length of stave , diameter of head , distance between heads , circumference of bulge outside measurement; representing as nearly as possible 7,056 cubic inches; and the thickness of staves not greater than (diameter ≈ ). Any barrel that is 7,056 cubic inches is recognized as equivalent. This is exactly equal to . * US barrel for cranberries ** Defined as length of stave , diameter of head , distance between heads , circumference of bulge outside measurement; and the thickness of staves not greater than (diameter ≈ ). No equivalent in cubic inches is given in the statute, but later regulations specify it as 5,826 cubic inches. Some products have a standard weight or volume that constitutes a barrel: *
Cornmeal Cornmeal is a meal (coarse flour) or a cell membrane ground from dried corn. It is a common staple food, and is ground to coarse, medium, and fine consistencies, but not as fine as wheat flour can be.Herbst, Sharon, ''Food Lover's Companion'', ...
, * Cement (including
Portland cement Portland cement is the most common type of cement in general use around the world as a basic ingredient of concrete, mortar, stucco, and non-specialty grout. It was developed from other types of hydraulic lime in England in the early 19t ...
), or *
Sugar Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or do ...
, * Wheat or rye
flour Flour is a powder made by grinding raw grains, roots, beans, nuts, or seeds. Flours are used to make many different foods. Cereal flour, particularly wheat flour, is the main ingredient of bread, which is a staple food for many cul ...
, or *
Lime (mineral) Lime is a calcium-containing inorganic material composed primarily of oxides and hydroxide, usually calcium oxide and/or calcium hydroxide. It is also the name for calcium oxide which occurs as a product of coal-seam fires and in altered lime ...
, large barrel, or small barrel * Butter and cheese in UK, * Salt,


Fluid barrel in the US and UK

Fluid barrels vary depending on what is being measured and where. In the UK a beer barrel is . In the US most fluid barrels (apart from oil) are (half a
hogshead A hogshead (abbreviated "hhd", plural "hhds") is a large cask of liquid (or, less often, of a food commodity). More specifically, it refers to a specified volume, measured in either imperial or US customary measures, primarily applied to alco ...
), but a beer barrel is . The size of beer kegs in the US is based loosely on fractions of the US beer barrel. When referring to beer barrels or kegs in many countries, the term may be used for the commercial package units independent of actual volume, where common range for professional use is 20–60  L, typically a
DIN DIN or Din or din may refer to: People and language * Din (name), people with the name * Dīn, an Arabic word with three general senses: judgment, custom, and religion from which the name originates * Dinka language (ISO 639 code: din), spoken by ...
or ''Euro keg'' of 50 L.


History

Richard III Richard III (2 October 145222 August 1485) was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 26 June 1483 until his death in 1485. He was the last king of the House of York and the last of the Plantagenet dynasty. His defeat and death at the Bat ...
,
King of England The monarchy of the United Kingdom, commonly referred to as the British monarchy, is the constitutional form of government by which a hereditary sovereign reigns as the head of state of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies (the Baili ...
from 1483 until 1485, had defined the wine puncheon as a cask holding 84 gallons and a wine tierce as holding 42 gallons. Custom had made the 42 gallon watertight tierce a standard container for shipping eel, salmon, herring, molasses, wine, whale oil, and many other commodities in the English colonies by 1700. After the
American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revoluti ...
in 1776, American merchants continued to use the same size barrels.


Oil barrel

In the
oil industry The petroleum industry, also known as the oil industry or the oil patch, includes the global processes of exploration, extraction, refining, transportation (often by oil tankers and pipelines), and marketing of petroleum products. The larges ...
, an oil barrel is defined as , or . Oil companies that are listed on American
stock exchanges A stock exchange, securities exchange, or bourse is an exchange where stockbrokers and traders can buy and sell securities, such as shares of stock, bonds and other financial instruments. Stock exchanges may also provide facilities for the ...
typically report their production in terms of volume and use the units bbl (one barrel), or kbbl or Mbbl (one kilobarrel, one thousand barrels), or MMbbl (one million barrels), and occasionally for wider comprehensive statistics Gbbl (or sometimes Gbl), for giga-barrel (one
billion Billion is a word for a large number, and it has two distinct definitions: *1,000,000,000, i.e. one thousand million, or (ten to the ninth power), as defined on the short scale. This is its only current meaning in English. * 1,000,000,000,000, i. ...
barrels). There is a conflict concerning the units for oil barrels (see ). For all other
physical quantities A physical quantity is a physical property of a material or system that can be quantified by measurement. A physical quantity can be expressed as a ''value'', which is the algebraic multiplication of a ' Numerical value ' and a ' Unit '. For exam ...
, according to the
International System of Units The International System of Units, known by the international abbreviation SI in all languages and sometimes pleonastically as the SI system, is the modern form of the metric system and the world's most widely used system of measurement. ...
, the uppercase letter "M" means "
mega- Mega is a unit prefix in metric systems of units denoting a factor of one million (106 or ). It has the unit symbol M. It was confirmed for use in the International System of Units (SI) in 1960. ''Mega'' comes from grc, μέγας, mégas, g ...
" ("one million"), for example: MHz (one million
hertz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that o ...
, or megahertz), MW (one million
watt The watt (symbol: W) is the unit of power or radiant flux in the International System of Units (SI), equal to 1 joule per second or 1 kg⋅m2⋅s−3. It is used to quantify the rate of energy transfer. The watt is named after James ...
s, or megawatt), MeV (one million
electronvolt In physics, an electronvolt (symbol eV, also written electron-volt and electron volt) is the measure of an amount of kinetic energy gained by a single electron accelerating from rest through an electric potential difference of one volt in vacu ...
, or megaelectronvolt). But due to tradition, the Mbbl acronym is used today meaning "one thousand bbl", as a heritage of the roman number "M" for Latin "mille" meaning "one thousand". On the other hand, there are efforts to avoid this ambiguity, and most of the barrel dealers today prefer to use kbbl, instead of Mbbl, mbbl, MMbbl or mmbbl. Outside the United States, volumes of oil are usually reported in
cubic metre The cubic metre (in Commonwealth English and international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures) or cubic meter (in American English) is the unit of volume in the International System of Units (SI). Its symbol is m ...
s (m3) instead of oil barrels. Cubic metre is the basic volume unit in the International System. In Canada, oil companies measure oil in cubic metres, but convert to barrels on export, since most of Canada's oil production is exported to the US. The nominal conversion factor is 1 cubic metre = 6.2898 oil barrels, but conversion is generally done by
custody transfer Custody Transfer in the oil and gas industry refers to the transactions involving transporting physical substance from one operator to another. This includes the transferring of raw and refined petroleum between tanks and railway tank cars; onto sh ...
meters on the border, since the volumes are specified at different temperatures, and the exact conversion factor depends on both density and temperature. Canadian companies operate internally and report to Canadian governments in cubic metres, but often convert to US barrels for the benefit of American investors and oil marketers. They generally quote prices in
Canadian dollar The Canadian dollar (symbol: $; code: CAD; french: dollar canadien) is the currency of Canada. It is abbreviated with the dollar sign $, there is no standard disambiguating form, but the abbreviation Can$ is often suggested by notable style g ...
s per cubic metre to other Canadian companies, but use
US dollars The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...
per barrel in financial reports and press statements, making it appear to the outside world that they operate in barrels. Companies on the European stock exchanges report the ''mass'' of oil in
tonne The tonne ( or ; symbol: t) is a unit of mass equal to 1000  kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton ( United State ...
s. Since different varieties of petroleum have different densities, however, there is not a single conversion between mass and volume. For example, one tonne of heavy distillates might occupy a volume of . In contrast, one tonne of crude oil might occupy , and one tonne of gasoline will require . Overall, the conversion is usually between per tonne.


History

The measurement of an "oil barrel" originated in the early
Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...
oil field A petroleum reservoir or oil and gas reservoir is a subsurface accumulation of hydrocarbons contained in porous or fractured rock formations. Such reservoirs form when kerogen (ancient plant matter) is created in surrounding rock by the presen ...
s. The
Drake Well The Drake Well is a oil well in Cherrytree Township, Venango County in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, the success of which sparked the first oil boom in the United States. The well is the centerpiece of the Drake Well Museum located south of ...
, the first oil well in the US, was drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859, and an oil boom followed in the 1860s. When oil production began, there was no standard container for oil, so oil and petroleum products were stored and transported in barrels of different shapes and sizes. Some of these barrels would originally have been used for other products, such as beer, fish, molasses, or turpentine. Both the barrels (based on the old English wine measure), the tierce (159 litres) and the
whiskey Whisky or whiskey is a type of distilled alcoholic beverage made from fermented grain mash. Various grains (which may be malted) are used for different varieties, including barley, corn, rye, and wheat. Whisky is typically aged in wooden ...
barrels were used. Also, barrels were in common use. The 40 gallon whiskey barrel was the most common size used by early oil producers, since they were readily available at the time. Around 1866, early oil producers in Pennsylvania came to the conclusion that shipping oil in a variety of different containers was causing buyer distrust. They decided they needed a standard unit of measure to convince buyers that they were getting a fair volume for their money, and settled on the standard wine tierce, which was two gallons larger than the standard whisky barrel. The ''Weekly Register'', an
Oil City, Pennsylvania Oil City is a city in Venango County, Pennsylvania known for its prominence in the initial exploration and development of the petroleum industry. It is located at a bend in the Allegheny River at the mouth of Oil Creek (Allegheny River tributary) ...
newspaper, stated on August 31, 1866 that "the oil producers have issued the following circular": And by that means, King Richard III's English wine tierce became the American standard oil barrel. By 1872, the standard oil barrel was firmly established as 42 US-gallons. The 42 gallon standard oil barrel was officially adopted by the Petroleum Producers Association in 1872 and by the U.S. Geological Survey and the U.S. Bureau of Mines in 1882. In modern times, many different types of oil, chemicals, and other products are transported in steel
drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair of matching drumsticks ...
. In the United States, these commonly have a capacity of and are referred to as such. They are called 200 litre or 200 kg drums outside the United States. In the United Kingdom and its former dependencies, a drum was used, even though all those countries now officially use the metric system and the drums are filled to 200 litres. Thus, the 42 US-gallon oil barrel is a unit of measure, and is no longer a physical container used to transport crude oil, as most petroleum is moved in pipelines or
oil tanker An oil tanker, also known as a petroleum tanker, is a ship designed for the bulk transport of oil or its products. There are two basic types of oil tankers: crude tankers and product tankers. Crude tankers move large quantities of unrefined ...
s. In the United States, the 42 US-gallon size of barrel as a unit of measure is largely confined to the oil industry, while different sizes of barrel are used in other industries. Nearly all other countries use the
metric system The metric system is a system of measurement that succeeded the decimalised system based on the metre that had been introduced in France in the 1790s. The historical development of these systems culminated in the definition of the Intern ...
.


Definitions and units

The abbreviations Mbbl and MMbbl refer to one thousand and one million barrels respectively. These are derived from the Latin "mille", meaning "thousand". This is different from the SI convention for where "M" stands for "mega" representing million, from the Greek for "large". Outside of the oil industry, the unit Mbbl ( megabarrel) can sometimes stand for one million barrels. The "b" may have been doubled originally to indicate the plural (1 bl, 2 bbl), or possibly it was doubled to eliminate any confusion with bl as a symbol for the bale. Some sources assert that "bbl" originated as a symbol for "blue barrels" delivered by
Standard Oil Standard Oil Company, Inc., was an American oil production, transportation, refining, and marketing company that operated from 1870 to 1911. At its height, Standard Oil was the largest petroleum company in the world, and its success made its co- ...
in its early days. However, while Ida Tarbell's 1904 Standard Oil Company history acknowledged the "holy blue barrel", the abbreviation "bbl" had been in use well before the 1859 birth of the U.S. petroleum industry. Oil wells recover not just oil from the ground, but also
natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbon d ...
and water. The term barrels of liquid per day (BLPD) refers to the total volume of liquid that is recovered. Similarly,
barrels of oil equivalent The barrel of oil equivalent (BOE) is a unit of energy based on the approximate energy released by burning one barrel (, or ) of crude oil. The BOE is used by oil and gas companies in their financial statements as a way of combining oil and na ...
or BOE is a value that accounts for both oil and natural gas while ignoring any water that is recovered. Other terms are used when discussing only oil. These terms can refer to either the production of
crude oil Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crude ...
at an oil well, the conversion of crude oil to other products at an
oil refinery An oil refinery or petroleum refinery is an industrial process plant where petroleum (crude oil) is transformed and refined into useful products such as gasoline (petrol), diesel fuel, asphalt base, fuel oils, heating oil, kerosene, liq ...
, or the overall consumption of oil by a region or country. One common term is barrels per day (BPD, BOPD, bbl/d, bpd, bd, or b/d), where 1 BPD is equivalent to 0.0292  gallons per minute. BP ''Statistical Review 2006''. One BPD also becomes 49.8 tonnes per year. At an oil refinery, production is sometimes reported as barrels per calendar day (b/cd or bcd), which is total production in a year divided by the days in that year. Likewise, barrels per stream day (BSD or BPSD) is the quantity of oil product produced by a single refining unit during continuous operation for 24 hours. Burning one tonne of light, synthetic, or heavy crude yields 38.51, 39.40, or 40.90 GJ (thermal) respectively (10.70, 10.94, or 11.36 MW·h), so 1 tonne per day of synthetic crude is about 456 kW of thermal power and 1 bpd of synthetic crude is about 378 kW (slightly less for light crude, slightly more for heavy crude).


Accuracy when converting from barrel to cubic metre

When used to denote a volume, one barrel is exactly 42 
US gallons The gallon is a unit of volume in imperial units and United States customary units. Three different versions are in current use: *the imperial gallon (imp gal), defined as , which is or was used in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Austral ...
and is easily converted to any other unit of volume. As the US gallon since 1893 is defined as 3.785411784 litre, a volume of one barrel is exactly 158.987294928 litres. Using the approximate value 159 litre is about 0.008% off. In the oil industry, following the definition of the
American Petroleum Institute The American Petroleum Institute (API) is the largest U.S. trade association for the oil and natural gas industry. It claims to represent nearly 600 corporations involved in production, refinement, distribution, and many other aspects of the ...
, a standard barrel of oil is often taken to mean the amount of oil that at a standard pressure and temperature would occupy a volume of exactly . This standard barrel of oil will occupy a different volume at different pressures and temperatures. A standard barrel in this context is thus not simply a measure of volume, but of volume under specific conditions. The task of converting this standard barrel of oil to a standard cubic metre of oil is complicated by the fact that the standard cubic metre is defined by the
American Petroleum Institute The American Petroleum Institute (API) is the largest U.S. trade association for the oil and natural gas industry. It claims to represent nearly 600 corporations involved in production, refinement, distribution, and many other aspects of the ...
to mean the amount of oil that at 101.325  kPa and occupies 1 cubic metre. The fact that the conditions are not exactly the same means that an exact conversion is impossible unless the exact expansion coefficient of the crude is known, and this will vary from one crude oil to another. For a light oil with density of 850 kilogram per cubic metre (
API gravity The American Petroleum Institute gravity, or API gravity, is a measure of how heavy or light a petroleum liquid is compared to water: if its API gravity is greater than 10, it is lighter and floats on water; if less than 10, it is heavier and sink ...
of 35),
API gravity The American Petroleum Institute gravity, or API gravity, is a measure of how heavy or light a petroleum liquid is compared to water: if its API gravity is greater than 10, it is lighter and floats on water; if less than 10, it is heavier and sink ...
calculated from density_oil as API_g = (141.5 / SG ) − 131.5,
where SG is
specific gravity Relative density, or specific gravity, is the ratio of the density (mass of a unit volume) of a substance to the density of a given reference material. Specific gravity for liquids is nearly always measured with respect to water at its dens ...
= density_oil / density_water.
warming the oil from to might increase its volume by about 0.047%. Conversely, a heavy oil with a density of 934 kg/m3 (API gravity of 20) might only increase in volume by 0.039%. If physically measuring the density at a new temperature is not possible, then tables of empirical data can be used to accurately predict the change in density. In turn, this allows maximum accuracy when converting between standard barrel and standard cubic metre. The logic above also implies the same level of accuracy in measurements for barrels if there is a error in measuring the temperature at time of measuring the volume. For ease of trading, communication and
financial accounting Financial accounting is the field of accounting concerned with the summary, analysis and reporting of financial transactions related to a business. This involves the preparation of financial statements available for public use. Stockholders, ...
, international commodity exchanges often set a conversion factor for benchmark crude oils. For instance the conversion factor set by the
New York Mercantile Exchange The New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) is a commodity futures exchange owned and operated by CME Group of Chicago. NYMEX is located at One North End Avenue in Brookfield Place in the Battery Park City section of Manhattan, New York City. T ...
(NYMEX) for
Western Canadian Select Western Canadian Select (WCS) is a heavy sour blend of crude oil that is one of North America's largest heavy crude oil streams and, historically, its cheapest. It was established in December 2004 as a new heavy oil stream by EnCana (now Ceno ...
(WCS) crude oil traded at
Hardisty, Alberta Hardisty is a town in Flagstaff County in east-central Alberta, Canada. It is approximately from the Saskatchewan border, near the crossroads of Highway 13 and Highway 881, in the Battle River Valley. Hardisty is mainly known as a pivotal pet ...
, Canada is 6.29287 U.S. barrels per cubic metre, despite the uncertainty in converting the volume for crude oil. Regulatory authorities in producing countries set standards for measurement accuracy of produced hydrocarbons, where such measurements affect taxes or royalties to the government. In the United Kingdom, for instance, the measurement accuracy required is ±0.25%.


Qualifiers

A barrel can technically be used to specify any volume. Since the actual nature of the fluids being measured varies along the stream, sometimes qualifiers are used to clarify what is being specified. In the oil field, it is often important to differentiate between rates of production of fluids, which may be a mix of oil and water, and rates of production of the oil itself. If a well is producing 10 mbd of fluids with a 20% water cut, then the well would also be said to be producing 8,000 barrels of oil a day (bod). In other circumstances, it can be important to include gas in production and consumption figures. Normally, gas amount is measured in standard cubic feet or
cubic metre The cubic metre (in Commonwealth English and international spelling as used by the International Bureau of Weights and Measures) or cubic meter (in American English) is the unit of volume in the International System of Units (SI). Its symbol is m ...
s for volume (as well as in kg or Btu, which don't depend on pressure or temperature). But when necessary, such volume is converted to a volume of oil of equivalent
enthalpy Enthalpy , a property of a thermodynamic system, is the sum of the system's internal energy and the product of its pressure and volume. It is a state function used in many measurements in chemical, biological, and physical systems at a constant ...
of combustion. Production and consumption using this analogue is stated in barrels of oil equivalent per day (boed). In the case of water-injection wells, in the United States it is common to refer to the injectivity rate in barrels of water per day (bwd). In Canada, it is measured in cubic metres per day (m3/d). In general, water injection rates will be stated in the same units as oil production rates, since the usual objective is to replace the volume of oil produced with a similar volume of water to maintain reservoir pressure.


See also

* 55 gallon drum *
Barrel A barrel or cask is a hollow cylindrical container with a bulging center, longer than it is wide. They are traditionally made of wooden staves and bound by wooden or metal hoops. The word vat is often used for large containers for liquids, ...
* Barrel of oil equivalent * English brewery cask units * English wine cask units *
Imperial units The imperial system of units, imperial system or imperial units (also known as British Imperial or Exchequer Standards of 1826) is the system of units first defined in the British Weights and Measures Act 1824 and continued to be developed th ...
*
List of unusual units of measurement An unusual unit of measurement is a unit of measurement that does not form part of a coherent system of measurement, especially because its exact quantity may not be well known or because it may be an inconvenient multiple or fraction of a bas ...
*
Petroleum Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crud ...
* Petroleum pricing around the world *
Standard Barrel Act For Fruits, Vegetables, and Dry Commodities The Standard Barrel Act For Fruits, Vegetables, and Dry Commodities is United States legislation that specified the standard barrel size and measurements for fruits and vegetables, establishing grading standards and inspections for each produce ty ...
*
United States customary units United States customary units form a system of measurement units commonly used in the United States and U.S. territories since being standardized and adopted in 1832. The United States customary system (USCS or USC) developed from English uni ...
*
Units of measurement A unit of measurement is a definite magnitude of a quantity, defined and adopted by convention or by law, that is used as a standard for measurement of the same kind of quantity. Any other quantity of that kind can be expressed as a multi ...


Notes


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Barrel (unit) Brewing Customary units of measurement in the United States Imperial units Petroleum Units of volume Alcohol measurement