😱💦 The Secrets Behind the Names in 'International Oil Prices' That Have the Whole World Screaming｜❗️Wake Up and the Number of Digits Has Changed❗️ | Reporter Hong Seong-yun｜That Dictionary

The account reports that Hong Seong-yun of Maekyung's That Dictionary, Economics Edition, took the sharp rise in international oil prices as an opportunity to explain why crude oil is measured in barrels and where crude oil names come from. It says that, amid the fallout from the U.S.–Iran war, the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on Saudi oil pipelines continued, with Brent at 103 dollars and West Texas heavy crude also approaching 96 dollars as of day 21. It explains that the oil prices we hear are dollar prices per barrel, not per liter, and that barrel comes from a word meaning a container in Old French of the 13th century, sharing its origin with barrique, a French oak wine cask, and barricade. It says that 1 barrel is 42 gallons converted into 158.987 liters, and traces this back to England in the 15th century, when Edward 4 legally standardized the tierce, a herring transport cask, at 42 gallons, and Richard 3 extended that standard to wine transport casks. It reports that, after oil fields were discovered in the United States in 1859 producers facing a shortage of containers used the common, sturdy 42 gallon fish casks; an agreement in 1866 and adoption by the Petroleum Producers Association in 1872 made this the standard. The reasons given are the manageable weight of 136kg, a logistics standard used for 400 years, and an extra 2 gallons to allow for losses in transit. It explains that Brent came from the brent goose when Shell named North Sea oil fields after seabirds, that WTI has the character of a financial product centered on futures, and that Dubai crude is a price benchmark for Persian Gulf crude bound for Asia. It says there are various theories about the abbreviation BBL, including Standard Oil's blue barrels, but that all remain unverified stories, and concludes by looking back at the origins of familiar names. All directional outlooks are the speaker's conditional judgments, not definitive predictions of short-term prices.