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.
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.
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.
Went down the Google rabbit hole, this article is the best summary I found (in 3 minutes of reading). Basically, wood barrels were first used as that’s just what existed from wine. It didn’t hold up so the iconic 55 gallon steel barrel was invented. The industry outgrew it and could save a lot on shipping/handling if they developed pipelines and tankers. Each of these transition took a few decades, but also pretty much follow the industrial advancements that occurred from the 1850s to the 1950s.
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.
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.
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.
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
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).
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).
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).
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?
Cleaning will use almost as much water and much more energy than filling it. In industrial settings you must be REALLY sure that the bottle is clean, so a lot of hot water.