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Why Is Oil Sold By The Barrel When Gasoline and Other Liquids Aren’t?
You don’t buy gas, water, or soda by the barrel
If you follow the economy, you will notice something that comes up quite often — the price of oil. Oil is sold by the barrel. At first, this doesn't seem odd. Oil has always been sold by the barrel, and the price of oil is bandied about so much that most people have been desensitized to the terminology. (The price of oil at the time of writing this was $74.14 per barrel.) But if you pause for a second to think about it, the whole thing seems odd. Why is oil sold by the barrel? How many things have you bought by the barrel recently?
In the 21st century, there are far larger and more efficient ways to sell things than in barrels. Oil is shipped on massive tankers that are some of the largest vehicles ever built by human hands. These tankers offload oil into massive fuel farms at special ports around the world. The largest tankers can hold between 1 million and 2 million barrels of oil. If we were still unloading oil by the actual barrel, that would be a stupid number of round drums being moved every single day. But oil isn’t actually sold in physical barrels, at least not in bulk, so why do we still use the term?
Many things used to be sold by the barrel, including fish, beer, and wine. (Kegs are the…
