Oil Barrels to US Pints (bbl to pt)

1 oil barrel equals 336 US pints exactly.

1 oil barrel = 336 US pints

How to convert oil barrels to US pints

To convert oil barrels to US pints, multiply the number of oil barrels by 336. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply US pints by 0.002976190476 (rounded).

US pints = oil barrels × 336

Example: 10 oil barrels = 3,360 US pints.

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 Pint (pt)

US customaryCurrent unit

One eighth of a US gallon, 473.176 mL (16 US fluid ounces). The US pint is about 17% smaller than the imperial pint.

Pint seems to come from Old French pinte, possibly from a Latin word meaning painted, perhaps because capacity marks were painted on containers. British North America inherited the 231-cubic-inch wine gallon around 1707, and the US liquid pint was derived from it as one eighth. After Britain adopted the imperial gallon in 1824, American and British pints parted ways for good.

Today the US liquid pint is exactly 28.875 cubic inches, or 473.176473 milliliters. The imperial pint, at 568.26125 mL, is about 20 percent larger. That is why a pint of beer in an American bar is a lesser drink than a pint in an English pub, and why recipes from different countries cannot swap pints blindly. In the US a pint is a common size for ice cream, cream and craft beer, and a separate US dry pint of about 550.6 milliliters measures blueberries and cherry tomatoes.

1 US pint = 0.473176473 liters (exactly).

Sources: Wikipedia: Pint; NIST SP 811, Appendix B.8: conversion factors for volume

Related conversions

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