A recent column on oil and gas industry abbreviations and units (OGJ, July 31, p. 38) struck a chord with readers.
Several letters and faxes throw further light on the "bbl" abbreviation and other matters.
R.W. Heggland, Evergreen, Colo., wrote: "Daniel Yergin, in his excellent history of the oil business, The Prize, mentions Standard Oil's blue oil tins. However, he does not relate them to 'bbl,' which would have been an interesting tid-bit."
John Gandsey, a petroleum and environmental consultant in Templeton, Calif., provided this quote from "Standard Oil Co. (Indiana)," a work published in 1955 by Paul H. Gidden:
"In the early days at Whiting (Ind.), vast quantities of wooden barrels were required for shipping all classes of petroleum products. Kerosene was shipped in blue painted barrels, gasoline in red painted barrels with paper labels and a red crown printed thereon glued to the end."
Gandsey wonders whether barrel would nowadays be abbreviated to "rbl," if gasoline and not kerosene had been the product most in demand in that formative period of the petroleum industry.
Stock tank story
Olav Skinnarland, general manager of Petec AS, Stavanger, said the blue barrel explanation reminded him of an explanation for the term "stock tank barrel," which he heard while studying at the University of Trondheim.
"My teacher in reservoir engineering was guest professor M.B. Standing," Skinnarland wrote. "I don't recall a lot from that time, but I remember Standing's maybe exclusive explanation of the term stock tank barrel.
"He told me that in the early days of oil production in the U.S. they often had problems finding suitable arrangements for collection and storage of produced oil.
"One of the options was therefore to utilize the water storage facilities for cattle, or stock. Consequently, a barrel of stabilized crude became stock tank barrel or stb.' "
Trendy view
Grover E. Smith, a petroleum engineer from Dallas, wrote on the subject of oil and gas units after I suggested the industry should adopt a uniform system of units. This proposal apparently struck the wrong chord with him.
"Your preference for the metric system is trendy, but it won't happen," Smith wrote. "It just so happens that the people who have contributed, and continue to contribute, the most to modern industrialization are users of the hated English system."
While I share Smith's admiration for U.S. innovation and engineering, I recommend that he wear a hard hat if he ever travels to Germany, Japan, France, Italy, or Britain, for example, to spread that particular message.
Heggland said that in his 34 year career with Conoco Inc. he had never heard the blue barrel explanation.
The derivation of bbl is, as Heggland said, only a tid-bit. It would be fruitless to try to prove that I will do my job any better or worse because I am no longer ignorant of the origin of bbl.
Yet this tid-bit has made the oil industry's colorful jargon more understandable to me and hopefully to many readers. This can only be for the best. To my inquisitive correspondents, thank you.
Copyright 1995 Oil & Gas Journal. All Rights Reserved.
