Factorio Forums

So I've just got around to upgrading my game and now I'm messing about with oil. I've worked out what to do with petroleum gas to produce sulfur which makes the sulfuric acid for the batteries but I haven't got a clue what to do with the heavy/light oil. At the moment it's just stacking up in tanks and they're getting quite full.

So what the hell do I do with it? lol

You need to use them as well because when your tanks fill up it will stop production which will stop the production of your petroleum gas as well.

I think there is some way to feed it into your boilers to replace the coal, though I can't remember if you can feed it in raw or if there is some recipe to do first.

I'm also messing around with it at the moment.

You can hook up light oil into a chemical plant to make solid fuel which works like coal, heavy oil is used to make lubricant, which can then be used to craft advanced mechanical stuff like electric engines (though this is the only use I've found yet, there are probably more). Maybe I got it wrong and light oil is actually used to make lubricant... Not really sure.

Either way some proper explanation would be very welcome.

There are recipies for cracking heavy oil into light oil, and light oil into petroleum gas respectively. You can to this in the chemical plants when researched (advanced oil processing).

yeah, cracking is the way to go.

A little heavy oil for lubricant (electric engines for bots, express belts), rest gets cracked to light oil. Light oil makes good solid fuel which is nice for everything that needs to burn fuel (trains, boilers, smelting). Any surplus gets cracked to petroleum gas, for the usual plastic, battery or processing module production. OFC this requires advanced oil tech, but until then you still have the ability to a) store it in tanks b) make solid fuel and burn it or store it.

Advanced oil is the biggest problem during the buildup of the oil industry, since adding the cracking later will very often lead to reconstruction of the oil industry. Also you need some blue science packs, which can be somewhat tricky if you're in a hurry. I usually build a few tanks for storage to compensate for the time until i got enough blues to get the tech, so i can skip the phase where no logistics bots are available. The bigger part of my industry is using belts, but for me, the bots are crucial for any advanced stuff.

If you jut want to get rid of a type of liquid (light oil before cracking is available?), just mine the container and place it back.

Sure, it means loosing a lot of potential stuff, but when you don't have the space or resources to expand your storage, it's a way to get things going again.

There are some ways to get rid from heavy/light oil:

1. Cracking to the lighter versions.
2. Making solid fuel and fire in burners/furnaces
3. Use as "steam"-fluid for steam-engine. Optionally warming them up before.
4. Destroy a fuel-tank and rebuilt it. (Hit C for fire at friendly entity)

Did I forget one?

Well, mining the tank, instead of destroying it, means that you keep the tank and wipe the content, unlike for chests.