Oil processing

Oil processing is a large part of Factorio. Oil processing may refer to the researched technology, the recipe used in the oil refinery, or the overall workings of oil.

Overview

There are various recipes that can be used to process crude oil into its fractions. Its fraction (heavy oil, light oil and petroleum gas) can also be cracked into each other. Their recipes and technology requirements can be seen below.

Process	Input	Output	Machine	Required technology
Basic oil processing	5 + 100	30 + 30 + 40		Oil processing
Advanced oil processing	5 + 100 + 50	10 + 45 + 55		Advanced oil processing
Heavy oil cracking	3 + 40 + 30	30		Advanced oil processing
Light oil cracking	3 + 30 + 30	20		Advanced oil processing
Coal liquefaction	5 + 10 + 25 + 50	35 + 15 + 20		Coal liquefaction

Setting up oil processing

Pumpjacks need to be placed on top of the middle of the oil well, which is highlighted with a green box when the pumpjack is held. Pumpjacks produce a certain amount of Crude oil per second, shown on the right, at the bottom of the information panel. Over time this value will decrease down to a minimum of 2 oil/s, so a pumpjack will provide unlimited oil but eventually at a very low rate.

Crude oil must be refined in an oil refinery. The oil refinery needs to have a recipe set (see above for available recipes). Once it is set and "alt-mode" is active, the input and output locations and the expected fluids are shown. The locations of these cannot be changed, only the entire machine can be rotated. The refinery will stop production of all products if one product output is full, so it should be insured that the products are transported out of the refinery.

Once the process finishes, the player will be left with 3 products: heavy oil, light oil and petroleum gas. Both heavy oil and light oil can be cracked to the next lower type in a chemical plant (recipe above). This is useful if the player has an abundance of one product, but is lacking another (a common problem).

Tips

• The circuit network can be used to easily control how much fluid gets used for each recipe, to ensure that the player always has enough. For examples on how to do this, see the circuit-network cookbook.
• If you run your heavy oil pipe from the refineries past a lubricant-making chemical plant before sending it to the cracking chemical plants, you can be sure that the lubricant production will have priority over cracking.
• Solid fuel is most efficient when created from light oil. If the player has too much heavy oil, cracking it to light oil then making it into fuel is more efficient than making heavy oil into fuel directly.

Transporting fluids

There are many ways to move fluids in Factorio, they are listed below:

• Pipes
• Fluid wagons
• Loading the fluids into Barrels and transporting them by Railway or the Logistic network

Optimal Ratios

The optimal ratio is the ratio of production that ensures no waste of time or materials.

Produce Petroleum gas

For producing petroleum gas, the optimal advanced oil processing ratio is 25:3:21 (advanced oil processing : heavy cracking : light cracking). Different ratios are close enough such as 8:1:7.

The refining can be sped up with modules, to prevent jams or inactive buildings it is recommended to speed everything up evenly. When slowing the process down (by using productivity modules) you are better off experimenting on altering the ratio or the speed on certain buildings, since the above ratios are only mathematically correct if all the buildings have the same speed, and have 100% productivity (in other words, no bonuses).

Calculating the optimal ratios is relatively challenging, since not all of the durations of the processes are the same (the crafting speed of a chemical plant is 1.25, but the refinery's is 1.0). If this were not taken in account, it would lead to (temporarily) inactive buildings, which is not optimal. The below table shows examples of these calculations for various module configurations.

	No modules		Prod 3 + 8x2 spd beacon		Prod 3 + 14/12x2 spd beacon
Oil refinery
Raw oil consumption	100		100		100
Water consumption	50		50		50
Crafting speed	5	sec/final item	5	sec/final item	5	sec/final item
Heavy output	10		10		10
Light output	45		45		45
Petro output	55		55		55
Raw machine crafting speed	1	crafts/sec	1	crafts/sec	1	crafts/sec
Craft boost	100%		505%		805%
Output bonus	100%	Final items	130%	Final items	130%	Final items
Total Raw oil consumption	20	per sec	101	per sec	161	per sec
Total Water consumption	10	per sec	50,5	per sec	80,5	per sec
Total Heavy output	2	per sec	13,13	per sec	20,93	per sec
Total Light output	9	per sec	59,085	per sec	94,185	per sec
Total Petro output	11	per sec	72,215	per sec	115,115	per sec
Heavy to light cracking
Heavy consumption	40		40		40
Water consumption	30		30		30
Crafting speed	3	sec/final item	3	sec/final item	3	sec/final item
Light output	30		30		30
Raw machine crafting speed	1,25	crafts/sec	1,25	crafts/sec	1,25	crafts/sec
Craft boost	100%		455%		655%
Output bonus	100%	Final items	130%	Final items	130%	Final items
Total Heavy consumption	16,66666667	per sec	75,83333333	per sec	109,1666667	per sec
Total Water consumption	12,5	per sec	56,875	per sec	81,875	per sec
Total Light output	12,5	per sec	73,9375	per sec	106,4375	per sec
Heavy to light cracking
Light consumption	30		30		30
Water consumption	30		30		30
Crafting speed	3	sec/final item	3	sec/final item	3	sec/final item
Petro output	20		20		20
Raw machine crafting speed	1,25	crafts/sec	1,25	crafts/sec	1,25	crafts/sec
Craft boost	100%		455%		655%
Output bonus	100%	Final items	130%	Final items	130%	Final items
Total Light consumption	12,5	per sec	56,875	per sec	81,875	per sec
Total Water consumption	12,5	per sec	56,875	per sec	81,875	per sec
Total Petro output	8,333333333	per sec	49,29166667	per sec	70,95833333	per sec
Ratio
Heavy cracking	0,12		0,173142857		0,191725191
Light cracking	0,84		1,263942857		1,399593893
Output	18	per sec	134,51685	per sec	214,42785	per sec

See also

• Fluid system
• Crude oil
• Barrel