Word: bbl
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...first long-distance pipelines were laid in the Northeast in the late 1870s and early 1880s, the first oil tankers were allowed to pass through the Suez Canal, and the modern shipping system was born. Today crude oil travels in tankers that can carry up to 4 million bbl. With daily world demand at about 85 million bbl., petroleum represents about a third of all international cargo. And even though the commodity is also measured in kiloliters (in Japan) and metric tons (in Russia), thanks to whiskey, the units are always converted to the 42-gal. barrel for trading...
...July 13 Iran's Oil Ministry announced that it had China's agreement to invest about $40 billion in refining Iranian gasoline. The deal would include financing the major new Hormoz refinery in southern Iran, which will be able to produce about 300,000 bbl. of gasoline and kerosene a day once the four-year construction project is completed. China would also overhaul Iran's aging Abadan refinery in the south so that its production could increase by 29%, according to Iranian oil officials, who provided no deadline for that project. (See pictures of the plainclothes terror of the Basij...
...deal has not yet been signed (and China has yet to confirm it), but if Iran pulls it off, it would solve one of the country's biggest headaches. For despite vast oil reserves and exports, Iran still imports about 130,000 bbl. of gasoline a day because its refineries are too few and too old to meet the demand at home. The Chinese deal would literally keep Iran's factories, homes and cars - in effect, a nation of 66 million people - running. (Read about Iran's campaign against foreign plots, real and imagined...
...ties with China, which have steadily grown over the past decade, have accelerated rapidly in the past 18 months. In December 2007, the Chinese oil giant Sinopec Group signed a $70 billion deal to begin drilling in Iran's Yadavaran field, which has estimated reserves of about 17 billion bbl. In January of this year, China's biggest energy producer, CNPC, agreed to develop a medium-size oil field called North Azadegan - a deal worth about $2 billion. And last month, while demonstrators were fighting pitched battles with paramilitaries on Tehran's streets, Iranian oil officials flew to Beijing...
...Technically, NYMEX has placed limits such that no one firm can control more than 20 million bbl. of oil. Then again, a previously unknown energy-trading company called Vitol controlled 11% of the open interest on NYMEX at one point last summer, which amounted to four times that. Around the same time, SemGroup, a large oil-distribution company, filed for bankruptcy after losing $2.4 billion on a short position that also dwarfed the supposed limit...