Oil Barrels to US Quarts (bbl to qt)

1 oil barrel equals 168 US quarts exactly.

1 oil barrel = 168 US quarts

How to convert oil barrels to US quarts

To convert oil barrels to US quarts, multiply the number of oil barrels by 168. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply US quarts by 0.005952380952 (rounded).

US quarts = oil barrels × 168

Example: 10 oil barrels = 1,680 US quarts.

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 Quart (qt)

US customaryCurrent unit

One quarter of a US gallon, 0.946353 L (32 US fluid ounces).

Quart is a word about fractions. It comes from Latin quartus, meaning one fourth, by way of French, and it was always meant to be a quarter of a gallon. Since gallons differed over the centuries, quarts did too. The US liquid quart is 57.75 cubic inches, about 0.9464 liters, while the imperial quart is a quarter of the 4.54609-liter imperial gallon, about 1.1365 liters. Canadian French even uses pinte for the imperial quart.

Older English trade also produced odd cousins. The Winchester quart was a big bottle holding two imperial quarts, later metricated to 2.5 liters, and the reputed quart of about 0.758 liters was once a standard British wine bottle size. In the United States a quart still means a carton of milk or cream or a tub of ice cream. Americans also use a separate dry quart, about 1.101 liters, for berries, so a quart of strawberries is larger than a quart of milk.

1 US quart = 0.946352946 liters (exactly).

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

Related conversions

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