The produced oil is counted in tons (in thousands, millions). Why, then, are prices determined “per barrel”? What does this strange word mean?
Homeland Barrel - England
There is nothing strange in this word. Translated from English, “barrel” means “barrel”, that's all.
Barrels have been used for a long time in European countries for the storage of bulk solids. Initially, wheat was taken as the standard. Eight pounds of wheat made up one gallon. And gallons in the amount of thirty-two and made up the desired barrel. It would seem, what does the fluid have to do with it? How can, for example, measure a barrel of oil in liters, if the standard is wheat? But wheat and other bulk solids existed as the only objects for filling the barrels for relatively short time.
When epidemics swept Europe, many began to associate them with the disgusting quality of water. And, I must say, not without reason. The population of cities and towns in the absence of sewage dumped sewage into the streets, then these drains flowed to the sources and infected them. Therefore, in European cities, water is almost out of use. A substitution was found quickly - the product of the fermentation of cereals (ale) and grapes (wine). Europe did not know stronger drinks then, but a lot of containers were urgently needed for the indicated drinks. Barrel Production wealthy many enterprising businessmen of medieval Europe.
Variety of barrels
To answer the question: “Barrel - how many liters?” - you need to understand the variety of barrels. In England, there were separate barrels for ale; with the advent of beer, beer barrels appeared. In addition, barrels for bulk solids remained.
French barrels called “barriques”, the contents of which were served as wines. Along with the French proper, there were Bordeaux and Burgundy barriques.
Russian barrels for liquids were several times more impressive than European ones and contained forty buckets (almost 492 liters), but Russian counterparts for storing alcohol were comparable to European ones - a little more than twelve buckets were in a Riga (wine) barrel, ten were in a beer barrel buckets, in a Polish barrel - eight buckets.
The Americans borrowed a language from England, units of measure, but American volumes were slightly different from English. So, the volume of a barrel for beer in the US is 31 gallons, and for other liquids - 31.5 gallons. For clarity of gallon size, use the picture below. A gallon is a little less than four liters.
That is, the answer to the question of what a barrel is equal to depends on what exactly is being discussed, because its volumes can range from 115.6 liters in a dry barrel of the USA to 163.66 liters in an English barrel. And this is if you do not take into account French barriques (about 228 liters) and Russian barrels.
Oil barrel
So how much is one standard barrel of oil in liters? About 159 liters, more precisely 158.988 liters. The rapid growth of the value of "black gold", an increase in its production, especially on the American continent, demanded an acceleration of trade processes. And the variety of barrel volumes not only did not accelerate trade, but even slowed down the process of calculating the exact volume of the delivered product. Therefore, at the Congress of Oil Industrialists in American Pennsylvania in the sixties of the nineteenth century, a unit for the sale of oil was established - a barrel with a volume of forty-two gallons. On the one hand, it is precisely such a weight, according to calculations, that is possible for one loader.And on the other hand, purely practical calculation affected - modern barges of that time contained exactly twenty such barrels, and the corresponding size was on the railway platforms.
Metric convention
Three decimal places, when one barrel of oil is indicated in liters, should not confuse anyone, because they appear only when converting from the American system of units to metric. A little later, Americans thought about standardization of world trade in Europeans. Twenty-five years before the end of the nineteenth century, representatives of seventeen countries agreed on a metric convention. One of these representatives was from Russia. Since then, a systematic transition from local to international units has begun throughout Russia. Instead of versts, they began to measure distances in kilometers, weight in kilograms instead of pounds, and volumes in liters instead of buckets. Gradually, new units of measure took root throughout the whole country, but old names are found in everyday life to this day. In the modern world, 55 full members and 41 associate members have joined the metric convention.
From barrels to another plane
A little higher was considered how much volume is a barrel of oil in liters. Standard American barrel. But after all, oil is extracted not only in the USA, it has a different density. Therefore, when asked about the hydrocarbons produced (“How much is a barrel?”), It is necessary to clarify which brand is in question. The denser the oil, the less barrels a ton will hold. And although we are talking about minor differences (for example, one barrel of Ural oil is approximately 137.3 liters, Siberian Light is about 134 liters), with production volumes in thousands of tons the difference will be significant.
