Factorio Oil Processing Stops? 5-Minute Fix Guide for Crude Oil Refinery Problems

When your oil refinery suddenly stops, you'll instinctively want to tear apart your entire piping system looking for an exhausted oil field. In reality, nearly all refinery shutdowns fall into just four categories: insufficient input, clogged output, water shortage, or research/recipe misconfiguration. I've been there—watched plastic production grind to a halt after blue science, only to discover the light oil tank was completely full and the refinery had locked up entirely.

This guide is built for Factorio vanilla 2.0 players who need to diagnose why their oil line stopped in under five minutes. Using just Alt mode and device GUIs, I'll walk you through the systematic breakdown. I'll cover the advanced oil processing ratio of 20:5:17, the more practical 8:2:7, plus heavy and light oil cracking techniques—so you can design an oil setup that stays running.

Your first scenario: the oil field or pumpjack isn't feeding enough crude. Oil fields deplete with extraction, but they never empty completely. Production floors at 6,000 cycles or 20% of initial output—whichever is higher. "Never empties" and "produces enough" are two different things. As your factory scales and consumption rises, supply shortages happen naturally.

原油供給の確認: ポンプジャックをクリック→油田%を確認。産出量×10/秒が目安

If a tank is high but flow stops, suspect connection errors. Watch for underground pipe direction and spacing—they can appear linked while actually broken.

Oil gets blocked not because "ratios are hard," but because "there's no overflow design." Once you lock in a diagnostic method, refinery shutdowns stop being a panicked emergency and become a routine, fixable problem.

The Four Core Reasons Your Oil Line Stops

Your oil line appears to have countless failure modes, but it actually narrows down significantly. The starting point for diagnosis is asking: Is input insufficient? Is output clogged? Is water missing? Is the configuration just wrong? Breaking it down in that order works whether you're running a megabase or your first factory—these four categories explain nearly everything.

The most critical insight comes from the Oil processing - Factorio Wiki(https://wiki.factorio.com/Oil_processing/ja) shutdown condition: in recipes that produce multiple fluids (advanced oil processing, coal liquefaction), if any single output—heavy oil, light oil, or petroleum gas—fills its tank, the entire refinery halts and produces nothing. This is where most people stumble: you see "no petroleum gas" and assume shortage, but you're actually staring at a full heavy oil tank while the refinery's paralyzed.

1. Crude Oil Input Shortage

Your first scenario: the oil field or pumpjack isn't feeding enough crude. Oil fields deplete with extraction, but they never empty completely. According to the Crude oil - Factorio Wiki(https://wiki.factorio.com/Crude_oil/ja), production floors at 6,000 cycles or 20% of initial output—whichever is higher. "Never empties" and "produces enough" are two different things. As your factory scales and consumption rises, supply shortages happen naturally.

Diagnosis is straightforward: if the refinery input tank sits low on crude, suspect supply first. Pumpjacks output based on field percentage—for example, a 115% field yields roughly 11.5 crude/second. Weaker fields, especially near depletion, might drop to 2 crude/second. When you start running plastic, sulfur, and lubricant off a single early-game field, that's when you hit the wall. Old, depleted fields respond to speed modules—a solid extension tactic.

2. Heavy Oil, Light Oil, or Petroleum Gas Tank Full

This is the most common culprit in practice. The symptom reads like "plastic stopped," "sulfur halted," "no petroleum gas arriving." But the real cause isn't gas shortage—it's heavy or light oil with nowhere to go, paralyzing the entire refinery. Oil processing is deceptive this way: if you watch only the fluid you want, you'll miss the cause entirely.

I hit this myself right after adding lubricant production. I piped heavy oil out fine, but consumption was small—so heavy oil piled up while the refinery locked solid. The solution was simple: I hadn't built overflow processing for the heavy oil. Heavy and light oil can be cracked down into lower-tier fluids at chemical plants, so advanced oil processing without a cracking/overflow strategy will choke repeatedly.

This ties directly to ratios. If petroleum gas is your goal, advanced oil processing pairs with heavy and light oil cracking in a 20:5:17 pattern, or the tighter 8:2:7 for mid-game. But ratios aren't enough. Real stability comes from ensuring excess heavy and light oil flows somewhere without stopping. When plastic looks short, check the heavy oil tank first—you'll fix it faster by draining the bottleneck than by staring at the shortage downstream.

3. Water Shortage

Advanced oil processing needs water, so if none arrives, the refinery stops. But here's the catch: piping or connection mistakes are far more likely than insufficient pumping capacity. The Offshore pump - Factorio Wiki(https://wiki.factorio.com/Offshore_pump/ja) is powerful—one pump can supply 200 boilers or 400 steam engines. For an oil line, that's overkill. Water shortages at that scale almost always trace back to mid-run piping problems, not intake inadequacy.

The symptom: everything else looks fine, the refinery won't budge, water input sits empty. Rather than trace back to the ocean, work backwards from the refinery's water inlet. Alt mode shows you connection issues instantly—like accidentally wiring water and crude oil to opposite sides.

4. Research Incomplete or Recipe Misconfigured

Easy to overlook: the refinery simply isn't set up right. Oil refineries don't run on placement alone—you must set the recipe. You thought you placed basic oil processing, but it switched to advanced (which requires water). Or the recipe is the right one, but piping assumes a different composition. Alt mode shows input/output positions; check the device menu, even if pipes look correct.

Research transitions are accident-prone. The moment you unlock advanced oil processing, keeping basic-processing mindset will instantly choke you—no heavy/light cracking means shutdown within minutes. Right after blue science, you often land in a half-built state: "I unlocked it, but overflow design isn't in yet." Coal liquefaction has the same trap: you can make oil without crude, but one shortage of coal or steam tanks the entire line, and you'll overproduce heavy oil.

Symptom-to-Cause Shortcuts

Oil processing punishes direct thinking. "Plastic stopped → petroleum gas shortage" is true at the symptom level, but one step upstream you'll usually find "light oil tank full → refinery halted" or "heavy oil tank full → refinery halted." Conversely, if every product is slow-dripping, suspect raw input. If only advanced oil processing just died, look at water and recipe settings.

Stability comes from watching where things pile up, not just where they're missing. In early factories especially, forget perfect ratios—just ensure heavy and light oil have escape routes from day one. Treat "one oil line with overflow handling" as a complete unit, and stops drop dramatically.

How to Diagnose in 5 Minutes

Step 1: Turn on Alt Mode (Press Alt)

Diagnosis starts here. Pressing Alt overlays input/output icons around refineries, chemical plants, and pipes—visibility jumps dramatically. Oil piping gets tangled fast; hunting pipes manually is slow. Let Alt show you the map first.

Look for one thing: does the visual layout match what you expect? Stand at the refinery. Identify where crude, water, heavy oil, light oil, and petroleum gas are supposed to connect. With Alt on and the refinery in view, scanning 3-4 adjacent tiles teaches you more than hand-tracing pipes.

Step 2: Click the Stalled Refinery—Check Recipe Name and Which Input/Output Slot Is Stuck

Click the refinery. Two things matter: the recipe name in the top bar (basic, advanced, or coal liquefaction) and which fluid icons are blocked.

The recipe name tells you what inputs and outputs are required. If it doesn't match your setup, no pipes can save you. Below that, the fluid slots show whether inputs are empty or outputs are locked. Low/empty input? Upstream shortage. Stuck output? Downstream clog. In advanced and coal recipes, one blocked output freezes everything.

When output looks clogged, click the corresponding storage tanks (heavy oil, light oil, petroleum gas in order). Check the fluid volume number shown in their UI. If one fluid sits artificially high while others are normal, that fluid's downstream is either undersupplied or the consumer stopped.

Pipes don't need exact number-tracking—color depth tells the story: thick color = flowing well; pale or empty = starved or idle.

Oil refinery - Factorio Wiki

wiki.factorio.com

Step 3: Pipe Connections, Underground Pipe Direction, Pump Orientation

If a tank is high but flow stops, suspect connection errors. Watch for underground pipe direction and spacing—they can appear linked while actually broken (consult the official Wiki for exact distance limits).

For inline pumps, check the arrow direction. Reverse direction = no flow past it. Pumps lit red? Likely disabled by circuit logic. If you've added conditional controls to cracking lines, a wrong condition setting creates "tank full but flow stopped" situations.

Step 4: Water Line—Trace Backward from the Refinery's Water Inlet

For advanced oil processing, water input matters. Click the refinery to see if water is empty. If yes, trace the water pipe backwards a few tiles rather than walking to the ocean. Ocean-side failures are rare; path failures are common. Dead ends, wrong directions, crossed pipes—all visible fast from the refinery backward.

The {{ogp:https://wiki.factorio.com/Offshore_pump|Offshore pump - Factorio Wiki||https://wiki.factorio.com/skins/wiki.png}} is powerful enough that capacity shortages rarely cause shutdowns at oil-processing scale. Assume piping went wrong first.

Step 5: Oil Field Supply—Click Pumpjack, Read the Field Percentage

If output, water, and config all look good, check whether crude supply is adequate. Click the pumpjack. The field percentage is your rough flow estimate: a 115% field yields ~11.5 crude/second. Early fields weaken over time. Weak fields pushing 20% might output 2 crude/second—sometimes enough for basic oil, never enough for scaled production.

Check each pumpjack in sequence. A single drastically depleted field reveals itself fast. If multiple fields supply one line and one is crippled, you've found a bottleneck worth addressing.

Step 6: Research and Recipe Validation

Final check: machine configuration. Did you unlock advanced oil processing but forget to switch the refinery recipe? Did you set coal liquefaction on a field with no coal nearby? These oversights are less visible than piping but equally paralyzing. A single glance at the recipe name solves it.

5-Minute Checklist in Fixed Order

Lock in this sequence—your brain will get faster each time:

1. Alt on → visibility boost
2. Refinery UI → recipe name + input/output status
3. Heavy/light/gas tanks → which overflows, which starves
4. Pipe path, underground direction, pump arrow, circuit light → connection check
5. Water input line → trace backward
6. Pumpjack % readout → supply adequacy
7. Recipe and research → configuration match

This order splits input vs. output failure before diving into details. Oil stops looking chaotic once you follow a path.

References: Pumpjack output formula|https://wiki.factorio.com/Pumpjack, Offshore pump|https://wiki.factorio.com/Offshore_pump

Fixes by Cause

Heavy Oil Buildup: Add Lubricant Consumer + Heavy Oil Cracking

Heavy oil piling to max while light/gas undershoots is the hallmark advanced-processing jam. The refinery halts when any single output overflows. Restart usually means expanding heavy oil's exit routes.

First fix: ensure steady lubricant consumption. If you're making lubricant but barely using it, the lubricant backs up, and heavy oil (its source) clogs with it. I've learned to check not "Is lubricant being made?" but "Does lubricant actually get consumed downstream?" If that line is thin, you've got a false surplus.

Second fix: heavy oil cracking (heavy → light) must run. Without it, "advanced processing works fine" is a lie waiting to happen. Add it as a standing system, not an emergency patch.

Light Oil Buildup: Convert to Solid Fuel or Crack to Gas

Light oil overflow is insidious—it'll choke your gas line indirectly. The solution is a permanent light oil escape route.

Easiest: solid fuel conversion. Per the Solid fuel - Factorio Wiki(https://wiki.factorio.com/Solid_fuel), solid fuel provides 12 MJ/unit, so it's useful for power or vehicle fuel—not waste. Overflow light oil into solid fuel, and your plastic line can breathe again. I watched this firsthand: clogged light oil tank → solid fuel conversion added → plastic production surged.

Alternatively: light oil cracking to gas if gas demand is higher. If you need both fluidity and throughput, run both conversions—one to solid (buffer storage), one to gas (direct demand). Light oil won't pile up if it has two escape routes.

Solid fuel - Factorio Wiki

wiki.factorio.com

Petroleum Gas Shortage: Switch to Advanced Processing + Cracking

If gas alone is starved (basic processing can't keep up), switching to advanced oil processing with cracking unlocked gives you a productivity boost. Scaling output comes not from "more refineries" but from "higher gas yield per crude"—cracking heavy and light oils downstream.

The baseline ratio is 20:5:17 (advanced : heavy crack : light crack) for pure gas maximization, or 8:2:7 as a tighter mid-game version. What matters isn't memorizing the numbers but understanding advanced processing only works with cracking built in. Holding excess heavy/light oil defeats the purpose.

Post-blue-science, basic processing's simplicity fades as plastic and sulfur demands surge. Switching to advanced + cracking gives you lubricant and gas—much more flexible than scaling basic infinitely.

Oil processing - Factorio Wiki

wiki.factorio.com

Crude Oil Input Weak: Connect New Fields + Speed Modules on Pumpjacks + Coal Liquefaction as a Stopgap

If input itself is the bottleneck, output management alone won't help. Expand supply through multiple vectors.

Easiest: new oil field connection. Old fields are predictable but deplete; new fields give you a clean output step.

Existing fields: speed modules on pumpjacks extend their productive life. Depleted fields especially benefit—low base output means even modest speed boosts help noticeably.

If you're far from new fields or want to keep the factory running, coal liquefaction as a temporary top-up is useful. It bypasses crude entirely, bridging supply gaps while new infrastructure builds. I've used it in megabases purely as a transition tool between oil field transitions.

Water Missing: Fix Pipe Path, Directions, Pump Orientation

Water shortages usually aren't intake failures. Scan the path backward from the refinery. Look for underground pipe direction mismatches, bad inline pump arrows, or missed connections. These are far more common than inadequate pumping.

If piping is solid but water still doesn't arrive, check circuit conditions on pumps—a disabled pump looks fine but doesn't flow.

Research/Recipe Mismatch: Unlock Advanced → Switch Refinery Recipe

If everything looks piped correctly but the refinery sits idle, open its menu. Does the recipe match your pipe design? Did you unlock advanced processing but forget to flip the refinery setting? These oversights are invisible in the factory view but absolute stoppers.

Coal Liquefaction Won't Start: Prime It with Stockpile Heavy Oil + Secure Steam + Build Overflow Design

Coal liquefaction is powerful but fragile. Once running, it's stable; starting it requires heavy oil, coal, and steam to all arrive together. If one trickles out midway, the whole line stalls and struggles to restart.

Add buffer tanks at the input—give the liquefaction plant room to bootstrap itself. Also: coal liquefaction produces excess heavy oil, so you need cracking or another outlet for it. Otherwise, you've traded one oil shortage for a different one.

Recipe Comparison Table

Start with basic for simplicity. Graduate to advanced once lubricant and complex fuels enter the picture—but only if you also build cracking and overflow pipes. Coal liquefaction bridges supply gaps but introduces new failure modes; use it tactically, not as a main line replacement.

Stop It from Breaking Again: Design Principles

No-Circuit Simple Layout: Tank → Cracking (Always On) → Solid Fuel Overflow; Prioritize Consumer Products via Pump

The easiest oil line design: receive all output in tanks, send heavy/light cracking to run constantly, drain consumer products (lubricant, rocket fuel) first, let overflow convert to solid fuel.

Here's the hierarchy:

1. Refinery → tanks (buffer the output)
2. Cracking systems → always enabled (process excess immediately)
3. Consumer outputs → priority pumps (siphon what you need first)
4. Leftovers → solid fuel (dump the rest into a useful resource)

This avoids ratio obsession. Demand fluctuates; ratios break. Buffers and escape routes don't. Tank placement also matters: a row of tanks (crude → heavy → light → gas) is easier to monitor and expand than a scattered mess.

Circuit-Enabled Variant: Tank Threshold → Crack Only Above Minimum

For tighter control: set a threshold on heavy oil (for example), enable cracking pumps only when tanks exceed that level. This keeps a reserve while draining excess. It's not harder than basic piping—just one condition per overflow pump.

For heavy oil: "If tank > X%, enable heavy→light cracking." For light oil: similar threshold toward gas or solid fuel conversion. You still run cracking constantly in the no-circuit version; circuit logic just tightens the belt.

The Ratio Deep Dive

Why 20:5:17 and 8:2:7 Work (And Why They Sometimes Don't)

20:5:17 (advanced refinery : heavy cracking : light cracking) is the canonical ratio for max gas yield in vanilla. 8:2:7 is the scaled-down practical version. Both assume identical machine speeds and 100% production modules. Change that, and the ratio breaks.

The real insight: these numbers represent a starting point, not a law. Once you build them, observe your tanks. If light oil is climbing while gas is stalled, your light→gas cracker is underpowered (either missing units or held back by conditions). If heavy oil piles up, add heavy→light cracking.

Don't chase the numbers; chase tank behavior. If you see a fluid permanently creeping upward, its downstream is the bottleneck. Ratios are a roadmap; reality is what your tanks tell you.

Why Speed Modules Wreck Ratios

A classic: you add speed modules to only the refinery, not the crackers. Now the refinery outputs fast, but crackers process at baseline—you overproduce heavy/light oils, and they clog. The ratio was right, but the execution speeds diverged.

Fix: either match module placement (all machines get modules) or adjust unit counts (more crackers). Or—the simpler path—let tank thresholds govern cracking. Don't overthink module balance; respond to what tanks show.

When Oil Fields Deplete

The Minimum Output Guarantee: 20% or 6,000 Cycles

Oil fields never fully empty. Per the Crude oil - Factorio Wiki(https://wiki.factorio.com/Crude_oil), output floors at 6,000 cycles or 20% of starting output—whichever is higher. So old fields produce slower but never cease. The issue isn't depletion; it's demand outpacing supply as factories grow.

Early-game "enough" becomes mid-game "insufficient" simply because you've added more processes downstream. That depleted field still works—just not at full speed for a massive factory. It becomes a supporting line, not a primary artery.

Crude oil - Factorio Wiki

wiki.factorio.com

Extend Weak Fields: Speed Modules on Pumpjacks

A crippled field at 2 crude/second stays productive under speed modules. Pumpjacks respond well to them—they're cheap enough and boost weak fields noticeably. I use this when new fields are far away and I want to buy time.

It's not a permanent fix, but it stabilizes the line without expanding territory or overhauling logistics. Pair it with a transition plan to new fields, and you're in good shape.

Far Fields: Pipeline vs. Train

Close new fields? Pipes are fine. Distant fields? Trains become smarter. Trains let you treat multiple far fields as one supply hub, making expansion much easier. Plus, troubleshooting a train line (station by station) is faster than debugging miles of pipes.

Coal Liquefaction as a Stopgap

When oil is weak and new fields aren't ready, coal liquefaction closes the gap. It's not a main-line solution—it's a supporting converter that bridges the period until crude supply improves. It will produce excess heavy oil, so cracking or overflow handling is mandatory, not optional.

The role is clear: temporary boost, not permanent replacement. Once oil supply restabilizes, liquefaction can scale down.

FAQ: Common Mistakes

"Will extra tanks solve everything?"

Temporarily, yes. Permanently, no. Tanks delay clogging but don't fix it. If you don't crack heavy and light oils or convert them to solid fuel, the same clog reappears once tanks fill. I learned this the hard way: stacked three extra tanks, watched them fill in order, same shutdown came later.

"When do I use coal liquefaction?"

Supplement weak or distant crude. Your main oil should stay crude-based, but when nearby fields deplete and new ones are far, coal liquefaction steadies plastic and sulfur production while you build remote infrastructure. Don't build it and forget crude—use it as a band-aid.

"Does lubricant production cause problems?"

Only if heavy oil overflow design is missing. Drain heavy oil into lubricant smoothly, but don't hoard it all there. Reserve heavy oil for lubricant, crack the rest. Then you won't starve lubricant and you'll clear the heavy oil tank.

"How do I know my pipes are wrong vs. my supply is short?"

Click tanks and read numbers. Full tank = clog. Empty tank = shortage. A tank sitting at 0 while the previous step is full = pipe break or pump reversed. Numbers don't lie; pipes often do.

Oil processing looks complex. Follow the diagnostic order, and it becomes routine. The secret isn't ratios—it's building escape routes for excess and watching tank levels. Once you internalize "tank full = clog downstream" and "tank empty = shortage upstream," you'll never panic again.