Why is 42 gallons a barrel

Residuals can be used for power plants, electric power generation, or bunker fuels in ships. These 6 gallons go to many, many products and have a wide range of uses from roads to candles. Image Credit: Medium. The refining process produces all of the products above, from the fuel we burn to the plastic with which our phones are made. As you might imagine, spilling 2 gallons of every barrel of oil would cause serious problems!

The abbreviation bbl actually came from prior to and the start of the oil industry, and its origins are unknown. Shipping by barrel was common for all types of goods, and bbl was simply the shorthand that was commonly used. Happy Fun Fact Friday! What's in a barrel of oil? Recent Posts See All.

What is ship recycling? Post not marked as liked. Offshore PPE. What is the Jones Act? Although it's been over a century since oil was delivered in actual barrels, 42 gallons remains the "per barrel" standard to this day. If you'd like to get yourself a 55 gallon drum of industrial-quality oil, head on over to Petroleum Service Company , the pioneer of online petroleum sales. OR, if all your oil needs are met for the time being, might we suggest learning about all the products made from a barrel of oil in our What's in a Barrel of Oil breakdown?

Information is power, after all. Back to Blog Homepage. Newsletter November by Petroleum Service Company on Nov 09 We know how the cold can really wreak havoc on all different types of equi. This lamp oil became very popular and as demand increased, so did the need for the crude oil it was derived from.

In the mids, all liquids that needed a tight container of any size were stored in wooden barrels. Skilled coopers barrel makers had been producing watertight gallon wooden barrels since Richard III set the size of a tierce of wine at 42 gallons in Nonetheless, the size of the container quickly became standardized around the gallon barrel, due to practical considerations :.

A gallon tierce weighed more than pounds — about as much as a man could reasonably wrestle. Twenty would fit on a typical barge or railroad flatcar. Bigger casks were unmanageable and small were less profitable.

By , in Pennsylvania the gallon barrel had become standard. Because Pennsylvania was at the forefront of the early oil boom, its practices were soon adopted across the country. In , 42 gallons became the standard for the Petroleum Producers Association and in , the U. Bureau of Mines adopted the standard as well. In the s, in response to the closing of the Suez Canal , larger tankers that could more efficiently transport oil around the Cape of Good Hope were needed, and so the supertanker was born, and by , ships that held about , barrels were being used to transport crude oil.