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The standard oil barrel of 42 US gallons is used in the United States as a measure of crude oil and other crude oil products. The 42 US gallon size of barrel as a unit of measure is largely confined to the American oil industry, since other sizes of barrel were used by other industries in the United States, and nearly all other countries use the metric system. Many oil-producing countries that did not have the technical expertise to develop their own domestic oil industry standards use the American oil barrel because their oil industries were founded by US oil companies.

Outside of the United States, oil is commonly measured in cubic meters (m³) or in tonnes (1 tonne = 2,204.6 lbs), with tonnes more often being used by European oil companies. International companies listed on American stock exchanges tend to convert their oil production volumes to barrels for global reporting purposes, and those listed on European exchanges tend to convert their production to tonnes.

The wooden oil barrel of the late 1800s is different from the modern day 55-gal steel drum (known as the 44-gal drum in Britain and the 200-L drum in Australia). The 42-US gallon oil barrel is a unit of measure, and is no longer used to transport crude oil – most crude oil is moved in pipelines or oil tankers.

The barrel of oil equivalent (BOE) is a unit of energy based on the approximate energy released by burning one barrel (42 US gallons) of crude oil. The Internal Revenue Service of the United States defines the barrel of oil equivalent as equal to 5.8 × 10⁶ Btu. A barrel of oil equivalent is approximately 6,000 ft³ of typical natural gas.

Other conversion data are the BBOe, (also BBOE), or billion barrel of oil equivalent, representing 10⁹ (US billion) barrels of oil, used to measure crude oil reserves, and million barrels per day, MMbd (or MMBD), used to measure daily production and consumption. Also used is the Mtoe (not middle toe but millions of tonnes of oil equivalent), a metric measurement equivalent to approximately 0.006841 billion barrels of oil equivalent.

The barrel of oil equivalent is used by oil and gas companies in their annual financial statements as a way of combining oil reserves and natural gas reserves as well as production into a single measure.

See also: Barrel of Oil Equivalent.