I read your article “Musings on ‘M,’” and I agree wholeheartedly about the confusing nature of certain abbreviations in our industry (OGJ, Oct. 27, 2008, p. 18). ‘M’ in particular never gave me much trouble, but there are a few that do.
I am from Houston, and my oil and gas experience is grounded in American abbreviations such as “MCF/d,” “bbl/day,” and, in particular, the larger numbers associated with those. Any decent industry publication has articles about Gulf of Mexico projects that will produce 250,000 bbl/day or transportation projects that will move 1.2 bcf/day (or 850 MMCF/day), and we all completely understand the approximate scope of the project. However, I have seen countless examples of projects that talk about gas in terms of “bcm” and oil in “million tons.”
While I know the approximate value of bcm and tons in relation to mcf and bbl, the math is complex for a casual reader, and it is no fun to actually try to make a conversion to get an idea of the scope of the project. I think the European measurements are fine, but can someone please make it a convention to at least put the English equivalent in parentheses for us non-human-calculator types?
Colin R. Eddington
Houston
