Two Barrel
Grumman F3F-2 "Flying Barrel"
How much petroleum does one barrel of oil produce, in barrels, is it, two, five or ten or more?
Does a barrel of oil produce one barrel of petroleum, five barrels, ten barrels or 100 barrels. This figure is never mentioned when we're talking about the cost of oil and the cost of petroleum at the pumps. I live in Canada and when oil goes up slightly, we often see a change of 10 cents a litre at the pumps. Just wondering.
One barrel of crude oil produces much less than one barrel of petrol. Crude oil is actually a mixture of lots if different petroleum products, from the very light Propane, through petrol and diesel, up to heavy fuel oils. The refining process splits the crude into its separate components. In simply terms, you heat the oil to a low temperature, and the light oils boil off. Collect the vapour and condense it to form the light oils such as propane (which has to be cooled to be a liquid - it's a gas at room temp) Hexane, Septane, Octane (aka petrol) etc. Then heat it a bit further and you get the slightly heavier oils come off, such as parafine, Kerosene, Diesel, etc. What you get left with at the end of the process is a black heavy sludge called heavy fuel oil, which is use as an industrial fuel in boilers, etc.
So one barrel of crude will give you a only few litres of many different oils. The proportions vary depending on where the oil comes from.
