[timoth3y]

Planet Money had a wonderful series of episodes where they did exactly this a few years ago.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/08/26/491342091/plan...

They traced the path of their barrel from purchase, to production, to refining, to the sale of the various hydrocarbon products.

It's a great listen.

[sgt]

Did they pay extra for the barrel itself? Surely that steel doesn't come for free.

[DrFalkyn]

You can sell the barrel after you are done

[johannes1234321]

Is there a market for barrels? - I would assume most oil is stored in tanks, transported via pipeline to harbor, loaded onto tanker and oil trucks with never seeing a barrel and the barrel mostly serving as a unit for calculation.

[conductr]

Im in Texas, lots of oil, and have seen market for such barrels when shopping for shipping containers and IBC totes in the past. Usually I find sellers of these things near distribution hubs.

The barrels never had been used for crude oil when I’ve inquired. Sometimes a refined oil product likely used as a raw material for a manufacturing process, but never crude. I think it’s never transported in such small quantities to make sense of using actual barrels. It’s more so a unit of measure, probably with some valid historical context.

My understanding is it’s most likely transported from a well via a pipeline and may need a short trip in a truck or train (tanker style) to get to the pipeline from the well. The well itself usually has a collection reservoir to allow for 24/7 extraction.

I don’t know exactly I’ve just been vaguely around oil industry and engineers my whole life due to where I live.

[pixl97]

Hello, my family has property with nat gas and some oil wells on it, and I've been out in the field with relatives that work in the industry.

In small fields they'll typically have larger tanks from the 1,000 to 10,000 gallon size. Wells typically also produce some water and small amounts of nat gas so they'll have some way to either store or burn the gas, and they'll either separate the water on site for disposal, or have a mixed oil/water product that is seperated at a later stage.

If the node isn't on a pipeline a vacuum/pump truck will show up either when the alerting systems hit a particular level, or when a particular interval of time has passed to ensure the equipment is still working.

Modern bulk pump trucks are simply the fastest way to move the product. No one in it for profit is going to move the unrefined product in amounts that small. It's not valuable enough.

[fragmede]

How long ago was it that it was shipped in barrels? At some point it must have been, but the lore of oil history is not something I'm familiar with.

[ForOldHack]

In Texas, you clean them out and make smokers. Oak barrels are worth 10x.

[bryanlarsen]

As conductr says, barrels are still commonly used for refined oil products. I worked at a gas station as a teenager, and we sold barrels of oil to farmers. They worked on a deposit system, we'd buy back the barrels. Or more commonly the farmer brought back the empty when buying a new barrel so didn't get charged the deposit.

[Mistletoe]

I have one for making into a little stove with a kit from Amazon and lots of people use metal barrels for burning trash in rural areas. They are super cheap though like $10.

[tokai]

There is.

https://www.purepac.co.uk/shop/category/drums/plastic-and-st...

[johannes1234321]

Those are 200L, a "barrel" as a unit for crude oil is ca. 159 liter.

Now for some use that may be fine, but that also requires proper cleaning (following environment proection rules etc)

My question was more like a cycle. The metal itself certainly got some value as well.

[greenavocado]

Would a metal recycler accept it?

[chasd00]

I live in Texas like another reply and those barrels are all over the place. They get used for everything from trash bins to bbqs. Also, old drill pipe is used for 99% of the pipe fences you see on farms/ranches.

[engineer_22]

Barrel is a unit of measure, like gallon.

[sgt]

I know that. But if you show up to an oil field and buy a barrel of oil, they're not going to give it to you in plastic bags.

[p1mrx]

Maybe they could use a plastic bag surrounded by a cardboard box, like the bulk cat litter at Menards.

[nielsbot]

They could tho? thinking face

[butlike]

Could petrol break down the plastic?

[reaperman]

Yes, crude oil / gasoline / diesel will break down polyethylene grocery bags.

[sgt]

Imagine the plastic waste and pollution! I think they should maybe consider hemp? That's an environmentally friendly option and it'll make a tremendous difference. /s

[Macha]

Selling you a single barrel of oil on a once off basis is _almost_ as absurd as expecting delivery in plastic bags.

[mapt]

Unless you're in Canada, where they sell everything in plastic bags, and a barrel of oil is a solid chunk of rock at room temperature.

[justlikereddit]

I tried to buy a foot of yarn but no one offered it packaged in feet

[pelagicAustral]

Didn't the price of the actual barrel became more onerous than the product itself during covid?

[duped]

My understanding from some of these articles is that oil isn't literally transported in barrels the vast majority of the time, it's in tanker trucks/rail cars/ships moving from source to refinery to retail the whole way. Part of what makes it fun to "buy a barrel of oil" is that you can't go many places and ask for a barrel, you need to bring the thing to put it in (like a tanker truck or rail car).

[Swoerd123]

This is common for a huge number of products, ranging from cosmetics, consumables, pharmaceuticals, bottled water, etc.

[HPsquared]

For carbon footprint also, I believe. For bottled water at least, manufacturing the bottle has by far the most environmental impact, even more so than the shipping/transportation part of the process (which you'd think would be severe, as water is heavy).

[thmsths]

That's an interesting tidbit. Every time there is a suggestion we switch to reusable glass bottles instead of plastic, someone raises the issue of the extra weight of the bottle which will lead to greater carbon emissions during transport.

But if, as you say the largest emission comes from manufacturing the plastic bottle, not the transport of the bottle AND the content; then it seems possible to lower the carbon footprint by switching to glass (on top of the other advantages like reducing landfill use/litterring/environmental pollution).

[vanattab]

Maybe both making a glass and plastic bottle take more energy to make then in transport? And or you have to transport the empties back to clean and refill?

[moralestapia]

>someone raises the issue of the extra weight of the bottle which will lead to greater carbon emissions during transport

Lmao, that's on the order of 1-2%.

[pydry]

in one market oil prices even went negative so presumably, yeah.

[qoez]

Makes me sad hearing this. Planet Money fell off so hard in the years after this