Oil and Gas

Understanding oil production numbers

Oil output is measured in barrels by E&P businesses. A barrel (abbreviated as bbl) is equivalent to 42 gallons in the United States. Companies frequently use bbl per day or bbl per quarter to indicate their output.

The usage of a prefix of "M" to indicate 1,000 and a prefix of "MM" to indicate 1 million is a widespread practice in the oil field. As a result, 1,000 barrels are frequently referred to as Mbbl, and a million barrels as MMbbl. When an E&P company declares production of seven Mbbl per day, for example, this translates to 7,000 barrels of oil per day.