bbl

BBL, written as bbl, is a unit of volume used in the petroleum industry to measure crude oil and refined products. It denotes one barrel, defined as 42 US gallons, which is about 159 liters. The term is widely used in production figures, contracts, and pricing, with volumes often expressed as barrels per day (bpd) for daily production or capacity, and as cumulative totals in barrels.

In practice, larger quantities are sometimes indicated with prefixes such as Mbbl or MMbbl to signify thousand or million barrels, though capitalization and usage can vary by company and market. The bbl unit is central to how oil is priced and traded, with many market quotes and settlement calculations expressed in dollars per barrel.

The 42 US gallon barrel has become the standard size in much of the international oil market, and bbl is not an SI unit. When converting, 1 bbl is approximately 0.159 cubic meters. While the unit is specialized for oil and related liquids, the broader acronym BBL can have other meanings in different contexts, such as organizations or leagues in other fields; in the technical and commercial oil context, however, bbl most commonly refers to the oil barrel.