The black liquid that effervesces the world got its name from the goose

The crown goose has a white ring around its neck, i.e. a wreath. Picture: Wikimedia Commons

Brent oil the price is staggering. There is a flash in the barrels when the Middle East is on fire. But who or what is this mysterious Mr. Brent whose movements the world’s stock markets follow?

He is a goose. Brent goose. In English brent goosein Latin Bernicla insole. The world economy rises and falls to the rhythm of the black liquid named after the migratory bird.

All behind it is the oil company Shell and its tapa name things after animalsn. Shell’s oil tankers are named after clams and conchs, and many oil fields are named after birds.

When huge oil deposits were discovered in the North Sea at the turn of the 1970s, we had to come up with names for the fields. Shell opened the bird book and started the alphabet from the beginning: A, B, C – Auk, Brent, Cormorant. In Finnish, ruffed grouse, cormorant goose – birds native to the shores of the North Sea.

Of the oil deposits, it was Brent that turned out to be of such good quality and profitability that Brent oil became a sort of yardstick and standard for the world’s oil qualities. The prices of other oils are still calculated according to Brent. If the best field had been even field C, i.e. Cormorant, the stock market would be speculating on meridian oil.

Self The Brent goose nests far away in the Arctic Ocean and migrates to the shores of Europe for the winter. The cormorant goose is small for a goose, weighing a couple of kilos and having a wingspan of about 60 centimeters. Its wingspan is just over a meter.

Its distinguishing feature is the white ring around the neck, or the wreath. The word wreath, on the other hand, comes from sepele. That’s also where the name of the coronary arteries comes from – the arteries go around the heart a bit like a wreath.

The name Brent is thought to come from the Old English and Old Norse word brand, which refers to burning. The goose is a little smoky in color.

Original There is no more Brent oil. The Brent deposit located between Norway’s Bergen and the Shetland Islands was pumped empty in 50 years. A whopping three billion barrels of oil, a black liquid squeezed from seafood and plankton that lived in the Jurassic period, were sucked out of there.

Before long, the oil in the North Sea will run out. But maybe another million years from now, the white goose will fly over the old fields on its way north.