There are measures familiar to us from childhood and used everywhere: liter, meter, kilogram. And there are those that we learn about indirectly - for example, in the process of reading. These are pounds and miles, pounds and arshins. There are also barrels - this word, meaning volumes, regularly flashes in stock reports, when oil prices are announced. A legitimate question arises: how many liters are in 1 barrel of oil?
Before you try to express a barrel in liters, you need to understand what this term means.
Back to the background
Translated from English, "barrel" is a barrel. Barrels have long been transported alcohol, bulk and other materials. As oil production developed, it was also transported in these containers, and the shipped goods were also counted in barrels - barrels.
But this way of counting was not very convenient. Firstly, all barrels could be of different sizes, which made accounting very difficult. And secondly, different materials transported in the same barrels differed significantly in their weight. That is, the concept of "barrel" had to be somehow brought to other units of measurement - in other words,standardize.
Russian "barrel"
By the way, measuring something in barrels is also an old Russian tradition. However, why be surprised? Before the advent of tanks and special containers, barrels were the most convenient, and sometimes the only means of transportation. And the same problem arose - to concretize this concept. A measured or fortieth barrel was 40 buckets (the Russian "barrel" in liters was approximately 492) and was considered a unit of capacity for alcohol, linseed or hemp oil. There were 10 buckets in a beer barrel, a little more than 12.5 in a Riga barrel. Resin or gunpowder, also stored in barrels, already represented a measure of weight, not volume. A barrel of gunpowder weighed 10 pounds, and with resin - about 9.
About Metrics
If you turn to history or, even more simply, leaf through books published once in different countries, the reader will be confused by the abundance of various measures. Feet, leagues, inches, miles, dozens of European terms, units used in the states of the East - all this was difficult not only to account for, but also to understand. Considerable difficulty was caused by the lack of standards, the ambiguity of individual concepts. It was also difficult to convert one unit to another. As a need for some uniformity, the international metric system of units (SI) was developed, using kilograms and meters, as well as their derivatives. This system has received worldwide recognition, although approaches to it differ in some places.
True, there are several countries where the metric system is not officially adopted. In particular,such countries include the United States. And this fact turned out to be important for a number of special measurements. For example, the dimensions of CDs, TV diagonals, etc. are measured in inches all over the world. A departure from the metric system is also observed in civil aviation, navigation - the old terms “feet” and “miles” are still used here. Barrel is not a metric unit.
Barrel as a measure of volume
Sometimes, when we hear about a certain number of barrels, we try to translate the result into tons. This action, although quite realistic with knowledge of the specific gravity of the material, is still not very correct. Barrels characterize volume, and tons characterize weight. It is much more logical to convert barrels to more familiar units of volume, for example, to find out how many liters are in a barrel? Really, how much?
The answer to this question is not unambiguous, just as the very concept of "barrel" is ambiguous. For example, an English barrel in liters will be 163.65. However, this value has changed several times. The volume of an English barrel depended on what exactly was measured by barrels (beer or ale), and also differed in different years. In the middle of the 15th century, a beer barrel in liters was 166.36, and since 1824 it was 163.66.
But 1 barrel in liters can be 119.24 if we are talking about American wine. The concept of "barrel" is inextricably linked with other, also not related to metric, measures of volume - gallons and hogsheads. In the USA, when measuring beer volumes, a barrel will be 31 gallons, but for othertypes of liquid, the figure will be different - 31.5 gallons (0.5 hogshead). In the case of measuring bulk, the answer to the question, how many liters in 1 barrel, will be 115.6 (this is the value of the so-called dry barrel).
About oil barrel
Yet most often the term "barrel" is applied to the extraction and transportation of oil. The concept of an oil barrel goes far into the past: fuel has been mined by man since ancient times. There was no single container for transporting this product, some people used wooden barrels, and some even wineskins. But the rapid growth of oil production in the 19th century raised the question of the emergence of more suitable containers. In addition, in the presence of different containers, it is inconvenient to conduct trade and transport calculations, and it was desirable to set the price of oil based on one barrel.
In 1866, a meeting of several independent oilmen took place in Pennsylvania (America). Among other issues discussed by them was the question of a standard container for the supply of oil. The outcome of the meeting was the agreement on a standard barrel representing a volume of 42 gallons. How much is it in more usual measures? 1 barrel of oil in liters will be 149.
Why 42 gallons?
But why is this volume taken as a basis? The fact is that by the beginning of the 18th century, hermetic barrels made of wood with a volume of 42 gallons had actually become standard for transportation. Fish and fat, molasses and wine, as well as other goods were transported in such containers. Barrels of thissizes were optimal in their own way: not too large and not too small, they were well placed on the barges and platforms available at that time. Moreover, one person was able to lift and move such a barrel filled with oil.
Therefore, the choice of the American oil owners was quite understandable and justified. In 1872, the 42-gallon barrel was officially approved as the standard by the American Petroleum Producers Association. And although now no one transports oil in barrels (there are tankers and oil pipelines for this), the barrel still remains a unit of measurement in the world practice of trading in petroleum products.
About the benefits of a barrel
But wouldn't it be more convenient to measure the produced oil in tons, as they measure coal and grain, metal and fertilizers? One of the reasons for the unpopularity of tons is the different density of oil; for the main Russian varieties, its value can range from 820 to 905.5 kg per cubic meter. Similarly, the weight of each unit of its volume changes. And if you can answer the question exactly what a barrel of oil is in liters, then it is already somewhat difficult to find out its weight.
So measuring oil produced and sold in volume rather than weight is much more convenient. If we also take into account the fact that it is customary to transport oil using tankers and tanks, pump it through pipelines, then the advantage of such a unit as a barrel becomes irrefutable. However, in the domestic Russian market, unlike the world market, oil is traded in tons, soconversion of volumes into weight and vice versa is still necessary. Here it is already necessary to take into account the grade of oil and its density, and special conversion factors are also used for calculations.
About the price of oil
But, in whatever units you measure the production of "black gold", it is still customary to pay for oil in dollars per barrel. Moreover, this is one of the dominant indicators on which not only the economy of a country depends, but also global economic and political development. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of oil for world production, as well as its share in the global fuel mix. As with any other commodity, the cost of oil depends on the volume of its production and consumption.
And at the same time, the price of oil depends on many other factors World production is built in such a way that the rise in prices for "black gold" does not significantly reduce its consumption, but a drop in oil production can lead to sharp jumps in prices. Not surprisingly, there is a growing political dimension to oil pricing; there are more and more players on the world stage who want to lower or raise the price of fuel, depending on their own interests. By the way, the price of natural gas directly depends on the price of oil. So, in almost all recent military conflicts, the “oil” trail is clearly visible.
And again about the barrel
Barrel is a measure of volume. Although this is the most commonly used, it is far from the only meaning of this word. The barrel is also one ofterms of poker (card game). For some reason, the word "Barrel" has become popular for the name of various objects - from an investment company to a nightclub.
