Oil Processing: Refining and Cracking Guide

If your factory is stuck waiting on plastic, lubricant, fuel, or science, oil is probably the missing link. The trick is not just unlocking it, but setting it up so it keeps moving without clogging itself. Start with the simplest refinery recipe that fits your current need, then move toward a balanced advanced setup once you can handle more fluids. If you need lubricant, advanced oil is the milestone to aim for first.

Unlock the right oil tech for the job

Your first goal is Oil processing so you can use Basic oil processing in the Oil refinery. That recipe is the simplest option: it takes Crude oil and gives you Petroleum gas only. Use it if you only need a gas supply and do not want to build cracking yet.

Once you can research Advanced oil processing, make that your next priority. It requires Chemical science pack research, and it unlocks the refinery recipe that takes Crude oil and Water and produces Heavy oil, Light oil, and Petroleum gas. This is the real turning point, because it gives you access to all the major oil products instead of only gas.

At the same time, Lubricant is also unlocked by Advanced oil processing and is made in a Chemical plant from Heavy oil. If your bots, belts, or other factory systems are waiting on lubricant, treat advanced processing as the goal rather than a nice-to-have.

Coal liquefaction comes later. It requires Advanced oil processing plus Production science pack research, and it lets you turn Coal, Heavy oil, and Steam into more oil products. It is useful as an alternate supply route, but do not rush it before your normal oil block is stable.

Set up your first refinery block and make sure it actually runs

When you place your first Oil refinery, do not assume it will work just because it has input pipes. You must choose a recipe first, or it will not operate at all. That is the first thing to check whenever oil production seems dead.

Next, watch the refinery’s chimney. A working refinery shows a visible flame, so you can confirm at a glance whether the block is actually running.

Then check the inputs and outputs in order. Basic oil processing needs only Crude oil. Advanced oil processing needs Crude oil and Water. Coal liquefaction needs Coal, Heavy oil, and Steam. If any required input is missing, the machine will sit idle. If any output is not draining properly, it will stop as well.

The most common mistake is building the refinery before you have a plan for the products. Advanced oil processing and Coal liquefaction both make multiple fluids, so the whole setup can stall if one product backs up. If the block stops, check output backup first before you redesign the whole thing.

Prevent heavy oil from backing up and freezing your whole system

Your main stability problem is Heavy oil. In an advanced oil setup, if Heavy oil fills up and has nowhere to go, it can block the rest of the refinery. Do not leave it sitting in tanks and hope it will sort itself out later.

Give Heavy oil an immediate job. The best first destination is usually Lubricant, because it has a clean and direct use and helps absorb Heavy oil reliably. If you do not yet need all of it for lubricant, crack the excess into Light oil in a Chemical plant using Water and Heavy oil.

If you are making fuel, remember that Heavy oil can also become Solid fuel. It is more efficient to process Heavy oil into Light oil before creating Solid fuel from it, so for a stable factory, prioritize lubricant and cracking first, then use the leftover fuel chain as a sink.

The rule to follow is simple: never let Heavy oil become the forgotten fluid in your network. If one byproduct backs up, the refinery can stall, and then all your downstream production stops with it.

Turn light oil and petroleum gas into the products your factory consumes

Once Heavy oil is under control, Light oil becomes your next balancing point. You can crack it into Petroleum gas in a Chemical plant using Water and Light oil. Use this when your gas demand is high and you need the whole network to keep flowing.

Light oil is also useful for fuel production. It can be turned into Solid fuel, and it can also be used to create Rocket fuel. If your factory is building toward higher-tier fuel needs, keep some Light oil available instead of cracking everything immediately.

Petroleum gas is usually the main demand sink for the whole oil system. It feeds refining and chemical processes, and it can be moved by Pipes and Pumps like your other fluids. If your factory is close enough, piping is the simplest answer. If the source is remote or the pipe route is awkward, use Barrels instead.

That is where Petroleum gas handling gets practical: it can be packaged into Barrels for transport, storage, trains, chests, or inventory movement. The Empty crude oil barrel is needed to fill one, and Fluid handling must be unlocked to make or process barrels. Use barrels when you need intermittent transfers, emergency supply runs, or a temporary buffer because pipe infrastructure is not worth building yet.

Choose a scaling plan: expand crude supply, crack the excess, or switch to coal liquefaction

When oil starts feeling tight, do not jump straight to a new fuel source. First, improve what you already have. Crack excess Heavy oil and Light oil so your refinery keeps running and your products keep flowing. That is the fastest way to stabilize a strained network.

If that is still not enough, expand your Crude oil supply. Crude oil comes from Pumpjacks on oil fields, and each percent of displayed yield corresponds to 300 pumpjack cycles. A pumpjack cycle takes one second without speed modules, and extraction per cycle is the displayed yield multiplied by 10, capped at 1000 units per cycle. Oil fields can be used indefinitely, but the displayed yield and remaining cycles decrease as pumpjacks run, so plan around that decline.

Only after you have squeezed more value from your existing network should you consider Coal liquefaction. It consumes Coal, Heavy oil, and Steam to produce more oil products, and it is best treated as an alternate supply route or a way to upgrade an initial Heavy-oil-focused setup. Build your oil system with flexibility in mind, because your output mix will change over time.

The best habit is to keep every oil product moving: Heavy oil into lubricant or cracking, Light oil into gas or fuel, and Petroleum gas into your chemical demand or barrel logistics. If you do that, the whole oil chain stays stable instead of becoming the bottleneck that holds your factory back.