oil barrel
Volumeexact by definition
The oil barrel is exactly 42 US gallons, 158.987294928 litres. It is the unit the entire petroleum industry trades, reports and prices in: production is quoted in barrels per day, reserves in billions of barrels, and every crude benchmark is a dollar figure per barrel.
Watch out: No oil has moved in an actual barrel for over a century; it is a unit of account, shipped in pipelines and tankers. Note also that the US beer barrel is 31 gallons and the UK beer barrel 36 imperial gallons, so "barrel" without a qualifier is genuinely ambiguous outside the oil industry.
| 1 | 158.98729 |
The 42-gallon figure comes from the Pennsylvania oil fields of the 1860s, where producers adopted the existing 42-gallon tierce used for herring and other goods. Coopers already made them, wagons already carried them, and a 40-gallon barrel filled to 42 gave the buyer a margin against leakage in transit.
One oil barrel in every volume unit
| 158,987,000 | cubic millimeter (mm³) | |
| 158,987,000 | microliter (μL) | |
| 158,987 | milliliter (mL) | |
| 158,987 | cubic centimeter (cm³) | |
| 32,256 | US teaspoon (tsp) | |
| 15,898.7 | centiliter (cL) | |
| 10,752 | US tablespoon (tbsp) | |
| 9,702 | cubic inch (in³) | |
| 5,595.57 | imperial fluid ounce (imp fl oz) | |
| 5,376 | US fluid ounce (fl oz) | |
| 1,589.87 | deciliter (dL) | |
| 672 | US cup (cup) | |
| 336 | US pint (pt) | |
| 279.779 | imperial pint (imp pt) | |
| 168 | US quart (qt) | |
| 158.987 | liter (L) | |
| 158.987 | cubic decimeter (dm³) | |
| 139.889 | imperial quart (imp qt) | |
| 67.375 | board foot (fbm) | |
| 42 | US gallon (gal) | |
| 34.9723 | imperial gallon (imp gal) | |
| 5.61458 | cubic foot (ft³) | |
| 4.51168 | US bushel (bu) | |
| 1.58987 | hectoliter (hL) | |
| 1.35484 | US beer barrel (bbl beer) | |
| 1 | oil barrel (bbl)this unit | |
| 0.207948 | cubic yard (yd³) | |
| 0.158987 | cubic meter (m³) | |
| 0.158987 | kiloliter (kL) | |
| 0.0561458 | hundred cubic feet (CCF) | |
| 0.0438639 | cord (cord) | |
| 0.000128893 | acre-foot (ac·ft) | |
| 0.000042 | million US gallons (MG) | |
| 1.58987e-10 | cubic kilometer (km³) |