On 20/02/06 1:40 AM, "Pierre Abbat" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I'm still in Brazil and yesterday they brought O Globo in and I flipped > through it and found a page listing oil prices or production in "barris". > (Portuguese nouns ending in "l" drop it when forming the plural.) > > phma Dear Pierre, Last year, Paul Trusten and I visited the Permian Basin Oil Museum, in Midland Texas, where we noticed a sign that read there had never been a standard barrel for measuring oil. However, the 'barrel' that never existed is still used daily for reporting the price of such things as West Texas Crude oil in newspapers and on television. I have to say that my suspicious mind immediately thought that the purpose of the 'barrel' that doesn't exist was simply to confuse and confound the minds of oil users. I even suggested to Paul that deliberate obfuscation might have been employed. For example, if the price of crude oil is $63.60 then this is about 40 cents per litre. When petrol (gas) is selling at 1.29 per litre here in Australia, as it was yesterday, people could well ask where the additional 89 cents came from, and more importantly, where it went to. Oil companies and governments could well be embarrassed by these questions. Cheers, Pat Naughtin PO Box 305 Belmont 3216 Geelong, Australia 61 3 5241 2008 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.metricationmatters.com This email and its attachments are for the sole use of the addressee and may contain information that is confidential and/or legally privileged. This email and its attachments are subject to copyright and should not be partly or wholly reproduced without the consent of the copyright owner. Any unauthorised use of disclosure of this email or its attachments is prohibited. If you receive this email in error, please immediately delete it from your system and notify the sender by return email.
