Oil Barrels to US Fluid Ounces (bbl to fl oz)

1 oil barrel equals 5,376 US fluid ounces exactly.

1 oil barrel = 5,376 US fluid ounces

How to convert oil barrels to US fluid ounces

To convert oil barrels to US fluid ounces, multiply the number of oil barrels by 5,376. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply US fluid ounces by 0.0001860119048 (rounded).

US fluid ounces = oil barrels × 5,376

Example: 10 oil barrels = 53,760 US fluid ounces.

Pints, quarts, gallons and fluid ounces differ between the US and the UK. Units are labeled 'US' or 'imperial' to avoid confusion.

About these units

Oil Barrel (bbl)

US customaryCurrent unit

Exactly 42 US gallons (158.987 L). The unit of crude oil trade since the 1860s Pennsylvania oil fields.

The oil barrel did not come from the oil industry's own design but from the barrels already lying around Pennsylvania. After Drake's well of 1859 started a boom, producers shipped crude in whatever containers were handy: whiskey barrels of around 40 gallons, plus 42 and 45 gallon casks. Buyers grew suspicious of the inconsistency, and around 1866 producers settled on the wine tierce of 42 gallons, two gallons bigger than the common whiskey barrel. An Oil City circular of August 1866 also promised an allowance of two gallons in every 40.

By 1872 the 42-gallon standard was firmly established, and US government bodies adopted it in 1882. The barrel is exactly 42 US gallons, about 159 liters, and remains the worldwide pricing unit for crude, even though many countries report volumes in cubic meters. EIA says Strait of Hormuz flows of 20 million barrels a day equal about a fifth of global consumption, implying roughly 100 million barrels a day. The abbreviation bbl has a disputed origin: a popular story links it to Standard Oil's blue barrels, but the abbreviation predates the oil industry.

1 oil barrel = 158.9872949 liters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Barrel (unit); NIST SP 811, Appendix B.8: conversion factors for volume; EIA: Today in Energy, Strait of Hormuz oil flows

US Fluid Ounce (fl oz)

US customaryCurrent unit

One 128th of a US gallon, 29.5735 mL. Not the same as the weight ounce, and about 4% larger than the imperial fluid ounce.

Fluid ounce began as an attempt to link volume to weight: the volume occupied by one ounce of some substance, such as wine in England or water in Scotland. Definitions varied by region and by liquid. When Britain defined its imperial gallon in 1824 as the space of ten pounds of water, the imperial fluid ounce came out so that an ounce of water weighs about one avoirdupois ounce. The US fluid ounce followed a different path and comes from the older wine gallon.

The US fluid ounce is exactly 1/128 of a US gallon, 29.5735295625 milliliters, about 4 percent bigger than the imperial one at 28.4130625 milliliters. American nutrition labels use yet another figure, treating one fluid ounce as 30 milliliters, a convenient rounding for serving sizes. The name is a trap, because a fluid ounce measures space while a weight ounce measures mass. A US fluid ounce of water weighs a bit more than an ounce of weight, while a fluid ounce of honey weighs considerably more.

1 US fluid ounce = 0.02957352956 liters (approximately).

Sources: Wikipedia: Fluid ounce; NIST SP 811, Appendix B.8: conversion factors for volume; 21 CFR 101.9: nutrition labeling household measures

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