this post was submitted on 24 Feb 2026
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7
Oilfield Units: a Measurement System so Cursed it made me Change Career (www.youtube.com)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by mech@feddit.org to c/videos@lemmy.world
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tl/dw:
A barrel (bbl, short for blue barrel) is 42 US gallons, because the Standard Oil Company used blue-colored barrels of that size in the 19th century. The standard was actually 40 gallons, but they added 2 to account for spillage and leakage.
The US gallon comes from a cylindrical wine gallon with depth 6 inches and diameter 7 inches.
It’s defined as being 231 cubic inches. Which only works out if you use 22/7 as the value for π.

Curvature is measured in "dogleg severity", measuring tapes are divided into tenths of feet, and the unit for power depends on which part of the oil rig you're standing on. And it gets worse from there…

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[–] mech@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago

tl/dw:
A barrel (bbl, short for blue barrel) is 42 US gallons, because the Standard Oil Company used blue-colored barrels of that size in the 19th century. The standard was actually 40 gallons, but they added 2 to accound for spillage and leakage.
The US gallon comes from a cylindrical wine gallon with depth 6 inches and diameter 7 inches.
It's defined as being 231 cubic centimeters. Which only works out if you use 22/7 as the value for π.

And it gets worse from there...