When many people saw this, their first reaction was the joke that barrels are expensive: in 2008, when the international oil price was 140 US dollars per barrel, the domestic oil price was more than 6 yuan per liter, and in 2018, the international oil price was less than 80 US dollars per liter. barrel, the domestic oil price is more than 7 yuan/liter because barrels are expensive. But the joke is a joke after all, because the current crude oil exports are not in barrels at all.
On land, they are generally transported through oil pipelines, with instruments directly installed at the entrance and exit (such as the Sino-Russian crude oil pipeline, which runs from the Skovorodino substation of the Russian Far East Pipeline through Heilongjiang Province in China and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region to Daqing Oilfield); while oil that does not border, such as oil imported from Saudi Arabia, is directly transported to various ports in our country through oil tankers. It is not filled barrel by barrel as we imagined, and then transported. , so in reality there is no concept of oil barrels affecting oil prices at all.
Why is it measured in barrels instead of tons?
In reality, we usually measure either weight or volume, and rarely use barrels. So why is crude oil measured in barrels? This is actually a matter of habit. Because in early Americans, oil was measured in barrels. In Pennsylvania, the birthplace of the modern oil industry, in 1859, after the Drakes drilled oil from wells, people hurriedly used various barrels to contain the oil. However, complex weights and measures not only cause trouble for buyers, but also cause trouble for government legislation and taxation.
According to general rules, when the industry develops to a considerable extent, unified standards are imperative. Therefore, the Americans finally formulated a 42-gallon barrel, which became the standard with an empty weight of 64 pounds (mainly barrels of this size), which were suitable for placement on flatbed trains. At that time, one train could hold just 20 barrels, and they were transported to the port. To various places. With the development of technology, although pipeline transportation and tanker transportation were later born, due to habit, Americans are still used to measuring by barrels.
If the United States is not the world's most powerful country, then barrel measurement will only be in the United States, because many other countries that have subsequently developed do not use barrel measurement. For example, crude oil futures on the Tokyo Exchange in Japan are still based on Prices are measured in international units of kilograms, but after World War II, with the rise of the United States and the dollar becoming the world currency, the United States controlled the world's main crude oil exports, and other countries in the world were slowly forced to accept crude oil measured in barrels.
How much does a barrel weigh?
The current standard 1 US barrel = 42 US gallons = 158.98 liters; as for how much it weighs? This is not necessarily true, because the density and quality of oil from different origins are different, so under the same volume, the weight will also deviate; currently, the average weight of a barrel of oil is roughly 0.137 tons, which means that 1 ton of oil is approximately 7 barrels of oil are required.