Barrel (unit) continued to use the same size barrels. In the worldwide oil industry, an oil barrel is defined as 42 US gallons, which is about litres or 35 imperial gallons. Oil companies that are listed on American stock exchanges typically report their production in terms of volume and use the units of bbl, Mbbl (one thousand barrels), or MMbbl (one million barrels) and occasionally for widest comprehensive statistics the Gbbl (or sometimes Gbl) denoting a billion. There is a conflict concerning the units for oil barrels (see ). For all other physical quantities, according to the International System of Units, the
Whale oil Front could be expected to use 10 gallons of whale oil a day. The oil was rubbed directly onto bare feet in order to protect them from the effects of immersion. The pursuit and use of whale oil, along with many other aspects of whaling, are discussed in Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick". In the novel, the preciousness of the substance to contemporary American society is emphasized when the fictional narrator notes that whale oil is "as rare as the milk of queens." John R. Jewitt, an Englishman who wrote a memoir about his years as a captive of the Nootka people