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That's another thing that puzzles me. Why do people put Crude Oil into Barrels?

It's such an elaborate thing to do, especially with having to make the Oil Barrels themselves (they cost Steel - ouch!) and having a Crating and an UnCrating Assembly Machine to do the work.

At one point I tried having such a setup, in a game, with 3-4 slightly remote oil fields each with 3-5 Pumpjacks, and I had automated crating going on, but I'd manually walk up there and take the full Barrells, and put in empty ones, then walk down to my Refinery and put in the full Barrels to be emptied, take the empty ones. But that didn't work well at all, with Oil Barrels having a painful stack limit of 10 per slot.

So I thought why not just use a huge-ass long transport Belt instead?

And if doing that, why not just use Pipes instead? As a simpler solution, mainly relying on underground Pipes?

I can maybe see using Barrels for really long distances, via Trains, but then again with the stack limit of 10 per slot, you're not going to get many packed into each train car, I imagine. 25 Crude Oil per Barrell and 10 per slot means 250 Oil per slot... Why not use a Pipe instead?

What am I overlooking, here? When would you want to use Oil Barrels? All the Youtube Tutorials seem to love them, but I don't understand why...

I barrel oil because then I have items, that means, I can store them in large LARGE quantities and move them quickly and painless where I need some oil. And steel is not that much "ouch" once you drown in iron plates Then you're happy to do something with it.

I haven't calculated the cost efficieny of running a several-thousand-fields-long pipe against barrels made of steel.
Remember fluid throughput worsens the longer the pipe goes, which then needs some pumps in between, which then needs some power lines in between, etc...

So I barrel them at the source, transport them like any other resource to my (only) base by train and store it there, ready to be tapped and used when needed.
The train then takes any empty barrels back to the source, where they get reused. Additional empty barrels are made directly at the source from a small stockpile of steel plates. Because - who knows when I need large quantities of oil? Pumping it just needs time, so I start stockpiling oil early.

People use oil barrels because they are crazy.

Trains. You can transport oil over long distances with them and surprisingly often you have to.

Don't forget that the longer the pipe, the more you lose fluid throughput.
To balance that, you need small pumps, built with electrical motors. And if your distant oil field outpost is really far away, you'll need a lot of them if you want to get the oil to your main factory.
Trains with barrels can guarantee that no matter how far your pumpjacks are, you'll be able to store locally and transport easily your oil. There is some math do to, ressource wise and time wise, to see if it's more optimal to go the barrel way or the pipe way (and I'm way too lazy to do it when I have no need for it ).

I already have a train infrastructure, why not use it for oil too?
Oil barrels are reusable. I only make about 40 barrels for a whole game and they're emptied and refilled endlessly as they ride around on my trains.

To span a distance of 1000 tiles using underground pipes (15 iron for 11 spaces) = ~1363 iron.
To span a distance of 1000 tiles using plain pipe = 1000 iron.
40 barrels = 40 steel = 200 iron.

People use pipes because they are crazy.

Personally I just use oil barrels for long distant transport via trains. I hate having to place like 50 underground pipes from a far outpost to my main base, so if I already have a train in that general area that is running and not full, it is just easier for me to box it up into barrels. :p
On a side note, I really wish pipes worked like power poles where you could just hold down mouse button and walk and it auto placed them at max distance...would be a wonderful haha