why is my oil and petroleum production decrease over time?

[JapaneseMom]

Hello

I have learned that oil in this game will never run out. but the problem is, my petroleum production decrease overtime and the production is getting slower, even though nothing changes


as you can see here, my petroleum and water production is constant, 60/60 and it will continue producing sulfur

Screenshot (1185).png (2.37 MiB) Viewed 5368 times

but, after I left it for some time, its starting to delaying its production for some reason

Screenshot (1186).png (3.11 MiB) Viewed 5368 times

is this just the matter of my petroleum production getting outdone by my sulfur production? or something is wrong with the way of me settings up petroleum production?? from my storage, I still have some oil on the storage (as you can see, I still have 19k left, so there should be no way the production is getting slower or delaying for any reason), so there's no way my there is anything wrong with my oil refinery machine, since its production time is always constant (below is the image)

Screenshot (1190).png (3 MiB) Viewed 5368 times

also, should I combine my oil storage to each other?? should I use pump? I thought pump used to pump liquid faster if your pipe setup is long and far, but according to the wiki, pump works as a valve, and on steam people recommend me to use pump and pipe for storage to production so I guess for faster fluid transportation (?), so this kind of like contradicting to each other, because what is the point of setting up valve if its not improving your fluid flow, right? Below is my current storage setup.

Screenshot (1188).png (3.43 MiB) Viewed 5368 times

[TheRangerLOL]

From what I've seen (and someone please correct me if I'm wrong), the storage tanks will slowly even out to fill to the same percentage level of the pipes, so, lets say if your pipes are filling up to 7 oil (out of a max 10), then the storage tanks will fill to 70% capacity. Adding a pump to the output of the storage tank will help the pipes fill up faster.

From what I can see here, however, is it looks like your sulfur petrol tank is empty. It doesn't seem like you want to connect all your tanks together but, I'm not sure, it just might be something that needs to be done. Either that or increase your production of petrol on the sulfur pipeline.

[disentius]

https://wiki.factorio.com/Crude_oil

Oil never stops, but the yield does go down.

[Serenity]

You don't need a tank after ever refinery. Just connect all the the refinery outputs together (use underground pipe for that), and if you need tanks you can stick some of them on the side. Preferably all directly connected together. One tank - maybe two - of petroleum is really enough at this stage

Pumps can help at the output side of tanks to empty them. They are also directional and can prevent fluid from going in a direction you don't want. And they can be controlled with the circuit network, which you need for advanced oil processing.

[starlinvf]

3 Things to help clear things up

- Crude oil wells deplete over time. They don't "run out" entirely, but their production rate lowers the more you extract from them. Once at the end of its prime production life, you can use Speed modules (and spd beacons) to up the extraction rate back to somewhat useful levels.

- Storage tanks are basically just really big pipes in the game logic. If you want to combine storage tanks, its helpful to try to lay them out so that the flow goes in one direction, and section parts of the fluid network using pumps. This helps avoid loops later on, since a pump loop can really mess up the distribution. So for crude oil, you put a pump facing into the tank to force all the pump jack feeds into the storage tanks. One pump going out of the storage arrays to force feed chem plants. Similar set up for oil cracking. When you're using a passive production setup, the pumps are overkill... but once you start working with circuit networks for line balancing or having to start/stop based on need, you can control pumps (enable/disable) the same way you can with belts.

-B: Pipes have an effective flow rate limit of 600. Pumps can go up to 1.2k... but only when using all pumps...... a LOT of pumps.... no pipes.

[disentius]

-B: is not true. Depends on the length of your pipe (#pipe segments)
There is a table on the wiki that tells you exactly the max flow in i/s for a given pipe length.
With 200 segments you still have a 1004 i/s throughput.

fluid capacity.png (21.03 KiB) Viewed 5293 times

[Yoyobuae]

also, should I combine my oil storage to each other?? should I use pump? I thought pump used to pump liquid faster if your pipe setup is long and far, but according to the wiki, pump works as a valve, and on steam people recommend me to use pump and pipe for storage to production so I guess for faster fluid transportation (?), so this kind of like contradicting to each other, because what is the point of setting up valve if its not improving your fluid flow, right? Below is my current storage setup.

Everyone just loves to blame the pipe system. When people see pipes and storage tanks they will quickly jump into misinformed discussions about pipe throughput and using/not using pumps, etc.

Even in this thread, no one has pointed out the obvious solution: You need more refineries.

If you want to keep the sulfur chem plant running full time, you need 4 refineries running full time to supply it. If you also want to run the plastic chem plant full time, you'd need 6 refineries. Just connect their all outputs together.

Now, do you even need the sulfur and plastic chem plants running full time? My guess is that no, you dont need them running full time. If you are asking these kind of questions, and judging by the size of your base, you don't need more sulfur or plastic. Just ignore the lack of petroleum gas and go build whatever you wanted that sulffur/plastic for. Once you are actually consuming the sulfur/plastic you can see if you really were lacking petroleum gas.

Also don't do something dumb like buffering tons of sulfur/plastic or placing storage tanks for acid.

[MassiveDynamic]

It is ineffective to use one refinery for each process. Instead chain your production together as shown here.
Fluid distribution has never been a problem for me even when I run long stretches of pipe. I do use circuits to control my cracking, but this is
a simple operation. I like to use one or two tanks per fluid and that usually suffices. You know you have a perfect ratio setup when all of your refineries are running all the time, but that's a lot of thinking. Using two tanks per fluid is quite forgiving of any ratio mishaps.

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[TheRangerLOL]

You guys failed to notice that crude oil isn't her problem here.

[astroshak]

Basic Oil Processing (BOP) drinks 100 Crude Oil and spits out 45 Petroleum Gas (PG), every 5 seconds. This means, each BOP refinery drinks 20 crude/second, and produces 9 PG/second.

Sulfur drinks 30 PG and 30 water to produce 2 Sulfur, every second.
Plastic eats 1 Coal, and drinks 20 PG, to produce 2 Plastic, every second.

It is not clear how many BOP refineries you have.

It takes 7.5 (round that up to 8) Chem Plants producing either Plastic or Sulfur to fill a yellow belt. Those Chem Plants would drink 160 PG (Plastic) or 240 PG (Sulfur) per second to output that full yellow belt. Again, BOP refineries produce 9 per second.

Just to get one full belt of both, takes 400 PG/second. To get that using BOP, it takes 45 refineries (44.444444444 technically, so round up).

And that’s ignoring any Sulfur needed for Sulfuric Acid or Batteries. 50 BOP refineries can drain a Storage Tank of crude in 25 seconds, so be sure to have a refill system set up.

[Serenity]

The lesson here is to produce some blue science and switch to advanced oil processing before greatly expanding the number of refineries. It's a bit more complicated to set up, since it needs cracking. But it results in much more petroleum from the same amount of crude oil.

Though 5 or 6 refineries is generally a good number to start with.
You seem to have 3 at the moment. Which as said isn't enough to run all of this at full speed. Once the sulfur belt backs up there will be more petroleum for plastics

[TheRangerLOL]

For what it's worth i think your setup is expanding just fine. Not everyone enjoys sciencing the crap out of this game, so some of what has been said may fall on deaf ears for not being relatable or relevant to the topic at hand.

[astroshak]

To answer the titular question, something I forgot to do in my previous post ...

When you output to a tank, that tank acts as a storage buffer. So you built up a supply of up to 25,000 PG as you were going and placing the other machinery. That supply kept the plastic and sulfur going, but when it got used up, you did not have enough PG being made to cover everything.

Thus, everything went well at first, but then slowed down to your PG production.

[JapaneseMom]

Also don't do something dumb like buffering tons of sulfur/plastic or placing storage tanks for acid.

what do you mean by this?

[JapaneseMom]

- Storage tanks are basically just really big pipes in the game logic.

by this logic, then what exactly is the purpose of storage tanks?

[Yoyobuae]

Also don't do something dumb like buffering tons of sulfur/plastic or placing storage tanks for acid.

what do you mean by this?

It means you don't put a lot of sulfur/plastic into chests, or place several storage tanks for sulfuric acid (I wouldn't put even a single storage tank, to be honest).

one storage tank = 25000 sulfuric acid = 2500 sulfur = 37500 petroleum gas = 23 minutes of production from your three oil refineries

What the above means is that the sulfuric acid chemplant will hoard up all your sulfur production (and thus petroleum gas) for around 23 minutes until the storage tank gets full. That takes way too long. Consider that sulfuric acid is only used in three processes: batteries, processing units and uranium mining. None of those consumes a large amount of sulfuric acid.

It is simply a huge waste of your time to place a storage tank for sulfuric acid. Something similar applies for lubricant.

Storage tanks make a bit of sense when you get to advanced oil processing or when you are using trains to carry fluids. Otherwise avoid using storage tanks whenever possible (unless you really know what you are doing).

[JapaneseMom]

Also don't do something dumb like buffering tons of sulfur/plastic or placing storage tanks for acid.

what do you mean by this?

It means you don't put a lot of sulfur/plastic into chests, or place several storage tanks for sulfuric acid (I wouldn't put even a single storage tank, to be honest).

one storage tank = 25000 sulfuric acid = 2500 sulfur = 37500 petroleum gas = 23 minutes of production from your three oil refineries

What the above means is that the sulfuric acid chemplant will hoard up all your sulfur production (and thus petroleum gas) for around 23 minutes until the storage tank gets full. That takes way too long. Consider that sulfuric acid is only used in three processes: batteries, processing units and uranium mining. None of those consumes a large amount of sulfuric acid.

It is simply a huge waste of your time to place a storage tank for sulfuric acid. Something similar applies for lubricant.

Storage tanks make a bit of sense when you get to advanced oil processing or when you are using trains to carry fluids. Otherwise avoid using storage tanks whenever possible (unless you really know what you are doing).

but what if I need sulfur or plastic to craft something?

also why is people so anti with storage tank? how else am I going to store it without storage tank?

[Koub]

also why is people so anti with storage tank? how else am I going to store it without storage tank?

Storage tanks are not an issue when used wisely.
But they are regularly used as a dump to spare the effort to make a deadlock free oil processing facility : sometimes, people just add tanks to prevent the oil processing to halt because of poor balance between the consumption of the various oil products, without proper oil cracking.
Example : use of advanced oil processing, but exclusive need of petroleum gas (no consumption of light or heavy oil). and instead of cracking to PG, people just add tanks to allow output, and add more tanks to make ever more room. That's bad design.

[jodokus31]

but what if I need sulfur or plastic to craft something?

also why is people so anti with storage tank? how else am I going to store it without storage tank?

a storage tank is a buffer. You have produced something, which sits around "useless". Buffers are necessary sometimes, but should be avoided.
If you have enough production, you can produce plastic or sulfur on-the-fly without storing it. That means, that your production chain may not have any bottlenecks.
If your production is too high, the machines will stop and back up anyway. Even the plastic on the belt is a buffer, as long as its not used.

Ok, but, whatever. Just use storage tanks to your liking and explore what happens.

[Serenity]

It's the same with chest buffers: storage just delays a resource shortage. They don't solve it. Their main use is to buffer train contents so you have stuff when the train isn't in the station.

Having some lubricant in storage is nice for sudden burst of demand. If you need to produce a batch of blue belts they can drain the storage tank quickly instead of waiting for whatever production you have at the moment. But that's about it.
Once you have circuit controlled advanced oil processing everything evens itself out as long you have roughly the right number of refineries and chemical plants. If you need lubricant you just cut off the heavy oil for the cracking plants. There you use a storage tank to read its level and shut pumps on and off. But a single tank is enough for that.

Anyways your three storage tanks for petroleum aren't really hurting you. But what is hurting you is the way you use them in those pictures. There is no need to buffer every refinery separately. And unless the screenshots show an experiment you are not adding all the outputs together, but route them individually to consumers