For 2014: Fourteen things you didn’t know about the oil & gas industry

Have you ever wondered where that extra 'b' comes from in bbls? Angus Warren, owner of oil consultancy Warren Business Consulting, has the answer as he offers up 14 interesting facts about the oil & gas industry.

1. The birth of the modern oil industry is held by many to be Drake’s well in Pennsylvania in 1859. The world’s first hand-drilled oil well however was in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 1848 (Russian Oil and Gas Institute).

2. Estimates of the world’s gas hydrate resource vary from 10,000 trillion cubic feet to more than 100,000 trillion cubic feet of natural gas (EIA). In comparison, total gas proved reserves at the end of 2012 stood at 6,612 trillion cubic feet (BP Statistical Review of World Energy, 2013).

3. The production sharing contract, at least in its modern form, was introduced by Indonesia. The so-called “Contract for Work” was implemented in 1960 (Oxford Institute for Energy Studies).

4. Oil and gas companies invested US$681 billion in E&P capital projects in 2013 and this will increase to US$723 billion in 2014 (Barclays Capital).

5. The lowest average annual average crude oil price in the US was US$0.49/bbl in 1861 (EIA). Brent hit an all-time low of US$9.10/bbl on 10 December 1998 (EIA).

6. OPEC was formed in September 1960. The five founding members of OPEC were: Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela (OPEC).

7. Iceland is the world’s biggest consumer of energy per head at 18,809 kg of oil equivalent per person per year (2012, World Bank). The equivalent figure for the US was 6,793kg, Japan 3,539kg and the UK 3,043kg.

8. Shell’s Prelude FLNG is the largest floating offshore facility ever created. The “ship” weighs in at 600,000 tonnes and has decks measuring 488 by 74 metres. It has been built to process 3.6MTPA (million tonnes per annum) gas from the Prelude field off Australia’s north-west coast.

9. The longest oil pipeline, Druzhba, is part of a huge pipeline network that stretches 5,327km (3,329 miles) from eastern Russia to Germany (Pipelines International).

10. Meanwhile, the world’s longest gas pipeline has just been commissioned. The imaginatively named West-East Pipeline runs from Huoerguosi on the China-Kazakhstan border, to Shanghai in east China and Hong Kong in south China. It’s 8,704km or 5,440 miles long (Forbes).

11. As of 5 January 2014, there are 3,344 drilling rigs active around the world (Baker Hughes).

12. Transocean’s ultra-deepwater drillship, Dhirubhai Deepwater KG1, holds the world record for the deepest water depth by an offshore drilling rig. The rig spudded a well in 10,411 feet (3,174 metres) of water while working for ONGC off the East coast of India in July 2013 (Transocean).

13. The word ‘petroleum’ translates literally as ‘rock oil’. Petroleum comes from the Greek word ‘petra’ meaning rock, and the Latin word ‘oleum’ meaning oil.

14. And finally, we are back to Drake in Pennsylvania in the 1850s. It is commonly understood that the unit of measurement in the oil industry is barrels because a plentiful supply of old whiskey and beer barrels were to hand at first oil.

But where does the extra ‘b’ in bbls come from? Extensive research suggests that the additional ‘b’ stands for blue and that there is documented evidence that blue barrels were in use well before Drake’s time.