Dear Norman (again),
I have interspersed some remarks.
On 2008/06/12, at 2:55 AM, Norman & Nancy Werling wrote:
If you have the magazine, I commend the subject article for your
reading. It was the old whisky barrel that became the measure of
crude oil in the United States. The article explains that Japan
measures crude oil in kiloliters and Russia measures it in metric
tons (tonnes).
If you refer to the article 'Does Oil Really Come in Barrels? NOT
ANYMORE.' By Daniel Engber (Posted Thursday, March 24, 2005) at http://www.slate.com/id/2115219/
you will see that although 40 gallon whiskey barrels were used to
transport oil it seems to me that 'the 42-gallon "cran" of herring,
for example, or the 42-gallon "tierce" of lard.' are more likely
precursors for the barrel. My own suspicion is that the closeness of
the two volumes 42 US gallons and 35 UK gallons might have played some
part as they are quite close so that trade international could take
place (between Canada and the USA for example). Here are the
comparisons:
42 US gallons = 158.987295 litres
35 Imperial gallons = 159.113216 litres
An excerpt includes this, "1866--Oil companies agree to standard
barrel size, 42 gal. (160 L) for tax purposes." In a posting I made
about two weeks ago, I mentioned that Time includes SI-metric terms
within parentheses with usually reasonable approximations.
Wikipedia puts an alternate view at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel_(unit)
suggesting that the oil companies were comfortable about giving an
extra two gallons per barrel to ensure customer happiness — I have
some troubles with this idea. Wikipedia (same page) also mentions the
oddities MBBL for thousand barrels and MMBBL for million barrels.
In this case, the exact calculation would have been 158.9872956 L
(3.7854118 times 42) which would have been ridiculous if shown to
such a degree of accuracy. It would have been negative toward
promoting acceptance of SI-metric.
There seems to be some confusion here.
The Google calculator reports that:
1 barrel = 117.347765 litres
The Canadian government at http://www.energy.gov.ab.ca/About_Us/
1132.asp says that:
A barrel is approximately 35 Imperial gallons, 42 U.S. gallons or 159
litres, roughly equivalent to the volume of liquid held by a standard
bathtub.
As all of these refer to a slightly different volume, I don't think
that I could rely on the Canadian government to measure my purchases
and sales of oil products.
And http://www.calculateme.com/Volume/Barrels(Petroleum)/ToLiters.htm
says that:
1 Barrels (Petroleum) = 158.987294928 Liters but this does not match
either your accuracy or your precision.
I don't seem to be able to find a 'standard' 'official' 'industry'
definition of a barrel so I suppose we could settle for NIST's:
1 barrel [for petroleum, 42 gallons (U.S.)](bbl) = 158.987 3 liters.
By the way, the photo that accompanied the Time article showed only
200 litre drums — there were no barrels in sight. As you know the 200
litre drum was designed in Germany in the early 1930s together with
its smaller relative the 'Jerry can', that held 20 litres. When the
200 litre drum arrived in Australia the locals filled it with Imperial
gallons and it was for many years known here as the '44'. I understand
that a similar 200 litre drum, when it arrived in the USA, was filled
with USA (Queen Anne wine) gallons and the 200 litre drum was then
known as a '55'. In all cases it was the same 200 litre drum that was
initially designed to hold 10 Jerry cans full of fuel.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
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