The volume of oil and oil products moving through America’s pipelines, waterways, roads, and rails borders on the unimaginable.

“Look at it this way,” says John Wright, a project leader in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Physical Measurement Laboratory’s (PML) Fluid Metrology Group. “Per capita consumption of petroleum in the United States is 10 liters per day. And there are 300 million people. That’s three billion liters moving around each day and usually being metered several times along the way. The infrastructure requirements are mind-boggling.”

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