“From farm to plate, the modern food system relies heavily on cheap oil. Threats to our oil supply are also threats to our food supply. As food undergoes more processing and travels further, the food system consumes ever more energy each year.”
Danielle Murray
Oil is the Most Energy Dense Form of Liquid Fuel
More often than not we hear commentators discussing oil in terms of barrels. A barrel of crude oil is 42 U.S. gallons or 158.9873 litres. A barrel of oil contains about six gigajoules of energy. This is equivalent to six billion joules or approximately 1667 kilowatt-hours. This equates to 5.8 million Btu, or British thermal units. This one barrel of oil with its astronomical 6.1 gigajoules of energy has the ability to do the work of approximately 2000 horse power hours. A healthy strong person doing physical work for eight hours generates around 75 watts of energy or one tenth of the energy a horse can deliver. Therefore as a rough guide, one barrel of crude oil has the ability to do around 10 years of human labour based on a 40 hour work week. Yet it seems many of us take this precious substance for granted, oblivious to how this liquid fuel has changed our lives, our economy and the way we live.
