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New measurement unit for oil

 Why use barrels?
 
(+3, -3) 		  [vote for,
against]

It seems to me that oil is measured in nothing but barrels, resulting in some ludicrous numbers. And who ever buys a single barrel of oil? Oil should be measured by the tanker.
—simonj, Jun 26 2008

http://answers.yaho...070318095307AAGAda0 [hippo, Jun 27 2008]

http://answers.yaho...080625215613AAlWtvi [hippo, Jun 27 2008]

Foxtrot cartoon http://www.gocomics...foxtrot/2008/06/22/
Involves measurement of petrol [ed, Jun 27 2008]

[link]






       Yeah, just bought a tanker of oil yesterday. The guy insisted on counting out the barrels, crazy.
—zeno, Jun 27 2008
   

       I usually buy oil by the quart.
—phoenix, Jun 27 2008
   

       Our oil has been sold by the litre since the 1970s.
—Canuck, Jun 27 2008
   

       Well, a standard barrel of oil (42 US gallons) has about the same capacity as a normal bathtub, so why don't we just measure oil in bathfuls? (see links)
—hippo, Jun 27 2008
   

       Surely the tabloid unit of volume is the Olympic-sized swimming pool.
—coprocephalous, Jun 27 2008
   

       ...and a 42-gallon barrel of oil is 159 litres, whereas an Olympic-sized swimming pool is 2.5m litres, or 15,723 barrels of oil, costing $2.2m at today's price.
—hippo, Jun 27 2008
   

       It seems to me that oil is measured using any appropriate measure you care to mention, resulting in numbers that suit the measurer/situation, simonj.
—Murdoch, Jun 27 2008
   

       I propose that the base new unit of oil be called "The Penguin". There would be 64 Penguins to one Polar Bear and 512 Bears to one Blue Whale.
—xenzag, Jun 27 2008
   

       Bun to [xenzag], measure oil in damage to the ecosystem.
—4whom, Jun 27 2008
   

       Why not use the man-hour equivalent? I've heard that 4 litres of petrol are equivalent to 23,000 man-hours of labour.   

       That certainly takes the sting out of $4/gallon, now doesn't it??? [+]
—r_kreher, Jun 27 2008
   

       [Murdoch] when have you ever heard of oil being measured by anything but a barrel? Certainly all the financial markets refer to barrels, I would be curious to learn what other units are specifically used for oil.
—simonj, Jul 01 2008
   

       Are you serious, simonj? Why does it have to be a measure specific to oil?
—Murdoch, Jul 03 2008
   

       Barrels are used, because the end user is often bent over one.
—4whom, Jul 03 2008
   

       [Ian]: The US. Here in the UK we pay about $10 a gallon, they complain about paying less than half what we do!
—Germanicus, Jul 03 2008
   

       I'd aways thought the barrel was 55 gallons, but now I discover it's only 42. I suppose that's the answer to everything, isn't it?
—ldischler, Jul 03 2008
   
      
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