How to figure out if its lack of refinery capacity or oil flow causing petroleum gas shortages?

[jpinard]

I'm short of petroleum gas as it's being sent to several different chemical plants. I can't tell if I need to add more oil platforms for extracting, or if I need more refineries.

How do you tell?

[Jupiter3927]

If your oil buffer between you pumps and refineries is full, you need more refineries.
If it's empty, you'll need more pumps.

If you don't already have a few tanks storing crude oil by your refineries, it might be a good idea to add some.

[Fel]

You can do some quick math but the easiest way is to have a look at the content of a refinery.

If the input of your refineries is always full (2 times what is required for 1 cycle) and they are working all the time then what you need is more refineries, if they are short on raw oil then you need to figure out if the issue is flow or amount of raw oil.

If your pumpjacks are stopping every now and then instead of working all the time it means that they are capable of outputing more than they can pump out into the pipes (so either the throughput of the pipes isn't enough or you are filling the pipes and the refineries input).
If they work all the time then it means that they are capable of outputing all of their production so you can add more of them.

Since you already checked the refineries before and they are not full, stopping means that the throughput is not enough, so make sure to use underground pipes as much as possible.
If the distance is too long either add pumps at regular intervals or use trains since those are capable of transporting large amounts over long distances very quickly.

[jpinard]

Whoa... wait a sec. Distance lowers volume? I do have a long run from the oil derricks. How do I know if I need a pump? How many pumps should I have?

[Jupiter3927]

There are a few solutions there.
Trains are easy to set up and expand.
You could put your oil in barrels and belt it over.
You could also add pumps to your pipeline to keep the oil flowing.

The best setup for using pumps is every single tile.
This has the most throughput.
I would place a pump after maybe every 5 underground pipe sets.

[jpinard]

Thanks for the information everyone. Getting better at this!

[astrosha]

https://wiki.factorio.com/Fluid_system

There's a fluid throughput table based on distances in there. Bear in mind the maximum flow through a pipe, and then use tanks, trains, and pumps to move the crude oil to your refineries.

[Warlord]

Keep in mind that if you are using underground pipes, it takes a REALLY long distance before the oil source stops pumping from a full pipe while your refineries are starved for oil. Like, several minutes by foot.

This usually isn't that big a deal, as the amount of oil produced at pumpjacks is usually quite small, and the pipe throughput at long distances can still be higher than the jacks are actually making.

The way to tell if distance is the issue, is to see if the jacks are clogged, while your refineries are dry. If the jacks are all running and (some or all) of your refineries are running, then distance is not the issue.

[Nailfoot]

I place electric pumps approximately the distance of large power poles.

You can power two pumps with one large power pole, so I always run my oil pipes in pairs, minimum.

[jpinard]

Originally posted by Warlord:

Keep in mind that if you are using underground pipes, it takes a REALLY long distance before the oil source stops pumping from a full pipe while your refineries are starved for oil. Like, several minutes by foot.

This usually isn't that big a deal, as the amount of oil produced at pumpjacks is usually quite small, and the pipe throughput at long distances can still be higher than the jacks are actually making.

The way to tell if distance is the issue, is to see if the jacks are clogged, while your refineries are dry. If the jacks are all running and (some or all) of your refineries are running, then distance is not the issue.

How many oil jacks does it take to fully power one oil refinery?

[Warlord]

@jpinard:

Um, depends. No, really, it does. Jack yield can vary per field, per individual spot, and over time. refineries use 20 oil PER SECOND per refinery to run. So if you have 2 jacks that provide 10/s (point at the jack and look at the info), they will combined be enough to run one refinery.

Most likely on average you will need from 2-5 jacks per refinery.

[bluemonkey]

Originally posted by Warlord:

Um, depends. No, really, it does. Jack yield can vary per field, per individual spot, and over time. refineries use 20 oil PER SECOND per refinery to run. So if you have 2 jacks that provide 10/s (point at the jack and look at the info), they will combined be enough to run one refinery.

Most likely on average you will need from 2-5 jacks per refinery.

Excellent point! I pool all my crude into a tank before pumping it anywhere serious. And if it's a long distance, I'll pump it into another storage tank at destination. Checking the storage tanks is an easy glance and helps keep the distribution organized. I don't often use flame turrets so not sure if flame turret folks organize their refineries differently.

[Nailfoot]

Originally posted by bluemonkey:

Originally posted by Warlord:

Um, depends. No, really, it does. Jack yield can vary per field, per individual spot, and over time. refineries use 20 oil PER SECOND per refinery to run. So if you have 2 jacks that provide 10/s (point at the jack and look at the info), they will combined be enough to run one refinery.

Most likely on average you will need from 2-5 jacks per refinery.

Excellent point! I pool all my crude into a tank before pumping it anywhere serious. And if it's a long distance, I'll pump it into another storage tank at destination. Checking the storage tanks is an easy glance and helps keep the distribution organized. I don't often use flame turrets so not sure if flame turret folks organize their refineries differently.

Did you know you can hook a red (or green) wire to your tanks, and daisey chain the wire to a power pole?

Then you can simple hover over the pole to see a grand total of all tanks in one convenient spot. If you ALSO plop a radar down nearby, you can check your oil totals from anywhere using the map view.

[Danub]

To add my two cents, you should consider playing around with trains. They are by far the best solution to long distance transport. Once you have your unloading station set up, tapping into another resource patch only takes copy pasting a station and connecting it to the rail network (aside from defending the site, of course).

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by bluemonkey:

Originally posted by Warlord:

Um, depends. No, really, it does. Jack yield can vary per field, per individual spot, and over time. refineries use 20 oil PER SECOND per refinery to run. So if you have 2 jacks that provide 10/s (point at the jack and look at the info), they will combined be enough to run one refinery.

Most likely on average you will need from 2-5 jacks per refinery.

Excellent point! I pool all my crude into a tank before pumping it anywhere serious. And if it's a long distance, I'll pump it into another storage tank at destination. Checking the storage tanks is an easy glance and helps keep the distribution organized. I don't often use flame turrets so not sure if flame turret folks organize their refineries differently.

100 units of oil give flame turrets 33 seconds worth of firepower. Its cheap and easy damage . One storage tank will supply 250 flamethrower turrets so it doesn't really matter if you chain so many of them that the oil flow is down to a trickle at the end.

That said, I usually have a train deliver oil to one tank along each side of the base any time the storage tank drops below half.