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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
  |
   |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
 |
 |
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
|
 |
  |
|
|
|
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 ensured that the products are transported out of the refinery; any products that cannot be used should be (temporarily) stored in a storage tank.
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.
Petroleum gas production
For producing petroleum gas, the optimal advanced oil processing ratio is 10:1:7 (advanced oil processing : heavy oil cracking : light oil cracking). Using coal liquefaction, the ratio is 60:39:55 (coal liquefaction : heavy oil cracking : light oil cracking), and 12:8:11 is close enough.
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 default ratios given above only hold if all the structures involved run at the same speed and have 100% productivity (in other words, no bonuses).