6 ms·
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/planet-mon
by timoth3y 1y ago
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/planet-money-buys-oil 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 1y agoDid they pay extra for the barrel itself? Surely that steel doesn't come for free.
- engineer_22 1y agoBarrel is a unit of measure, like gallon.
- sgt 1y agoI 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.
- nielsbot 1y agoThey could tho? thinking face
- p1mrx 1y agoMaybe they could use a plastic bag surrounded by a cardboard box, like the bulk cat litter at Menards.
- Macha 1y agoSelling you a single barrel of oil on a once off basis is _almost_ as absurd as expecting delivery in plastic bags.
- mapt 1y agoUnless 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.
- pelagicAustral 1y agoDidn't the price of the actual barrel became more onerous than the product itself during covid?
- Swoerd123 1y agoThis is common for a huge number of products, ranging from cosmetics, consumables, pharmaceuticals, bottled water, etc.
- HPsquared 1y agoFor 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 1y agoThat'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).
- moralestapia 1y ago>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%.
- vanattab 1y agoMaybe 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?
- DrFalkyn 1y agoYou can sell the barrel after you are done
- johannes1234321 1y agoIs 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.
- Mistletoe 1y agoI 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.
- conductr 1y agoIm 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 1y agoHello, 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.
- justlikereddit 1y agoI tried to buy a foot of yarn but no one offered it packaged in feet
- qoez 1y agoMakes me sad hearing this. Planet Money fell off so hard in the years after this