The Oil Drum: Getting a Grasp on Oil Production Volumes

Oil production numbers are often measured in millions of barrels (1 mb= 106 barrels) or billions of barrels (1 Gb= 109 barrels). In the January issue of the IEEE Spectrum magazine, I found this little article: Joules, BTUs, Quads—Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off. They proposed to measure energy quantities in terms of Cubic Miles of Oil (CMO): 1 CMO= 4.17 cubic kilometers= 26.22 Gb (assuming 1 US barrel= 42 gallons). What can we learn from this?
much more after the jump The Oil Drum.