Oil is the resource that turns a base from a camp into a machine, and the numbers behind it are unusually tidy: 0.2 weight per unit, 100 per stack, and 6 oil in every forge cycle that makes gasoline. Those three figures are enough to plan a powered base without ever guessing at yields.
The cached wiki data in ark-resources.json also explains why oil feels scarce in a way metal never does: almost nothing converts into oil. It has to be gathered, pumped, or farmed, and each route has a different cost profile.
Oil in the dataset
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Rarity | Uncommon |
| Weight per unit | 0.2 |
| Stack size | 100 |
| Weight of a full stack | 20 |
| Renewable | Yes |
| Refineable | Yes |
| Beacon colour | not listed |
| Exchange quantity | 20 |
The 20-weight stack is the fact that shapes every oil trip. A bird carrying 900 weight moves 45 stacks — 4,500 oil — but only if it carries nothing else and only if you can find that much. In practice the return leg is light and the outbound leg is the one that needs planning.
Oil is a thick, unrefined resource gathered from oceans, rocks and certain creatures. — ARK Wiki
Short, and the shortest possible description of the problem: the item is bulk cargo, not a trophy.
The conversion that matters: 6 oil, 5 hide, one forge cycle
Gasoline is where oil goes, and the recipe fields are specific about the trade:
| Recipe field | Value |
|---|---|
| Station | Refining Forge |
| Alternate stations | Industrial Forge, Chemistry Bench, Phoenix, Magmasaur |
| Oil per cycle | 6 |
| Hide per cycle | 5 |
| Craft-quantity field | 5 |
| Gasoline weight | 0.1 |
| Gasoline stack | 100 |
With a craft quantity of 5, a cycle that consumes 6 oil returns 5 gasoline — 1.2 oil per unit. That ratio is why oil pressure feels gentler than it looks: a full stack of 100 oil yields roughly 83 gasoline, which is 8.3 weight of fuel and a long time of generator uptime.
The alternate route on Aberration skips oil entirely. Gas-Crafted gasoline is listed as 20 Congealed Gas Ball plus 20 Green Gem or Fragmented Green Gem — worth knowing if you play the map where oil rocks are scarce and gas veins are not.
Four sources, ranked by what they cost you
The dataset does not publish a yield per node, so the honest comparison is what each source demands of your time and gear:
| Source | What it needs | What it gives |
|---|---|---|
| Oil rocks, harvested | A rock-capable harvester and a hostile biome | Raw oil at 0.2 per unit |
| Oil Vein | An Oil Pump placed on the vein | Passive oil over time |
| Hesperornis egg farm | 1 egg per 12 oil in an Industrial Cooker | Renewable oil without leaving base |
| Dung Beetles | A pen and a steady supply of feces | Oil plus fertilizer as a by-product |
The Oil Vein is the only passive field source, and the dataset lists exactly where it exists: Scorched Earth, Ragnarok, Valguero, Genesis Part 1, Crystal Isles and Lost Island. If you play The Island, that route does not exist for you and the egg farm becomes the only base-bound option.
The egg route deserves a closer look because the ratio is generous. One egg against a quantity of 12 means a single Hesperornis laying steadily out-produces a hand-harvesting trip once the cooker is running. The bottleneck stops being oil and becomes eggs, which is a much easier problem to scale.
What actually consumes the oil
Oil is not only fuel. The build costs in the cached items file show where it disappears:
| Consumer | Oil | Other inputs |
|---|---|---|
| Industrial Forge | 400 | 2,500 ingots, 250 Crystal, 600 paste |
| Cryopod | 4 | 10 Crystal, 15 Fiber, 5 Hide, 2 ingots, 8 Polymer |
| Absorbent Substrate | 2 | 2 Black Pearl |
| Gasoline | 6 per cycle | 5 Hide |
An Industrial Forge at 400 oil is 4 full stacks — 80 weight of cargo that has to arrive before the structure exists. That single line explains the classic mid-game stall: the tribe has the ingots, has the crystal, has the paste, and is 400 oil short of the thing that would make smelting cheap.
Absorbent Substrate at 2 oil and 2 Black Pearl is the small, expensive end. It unlocks at level 84 for 60 points, and it is the reason black pearls stay relevant long after tek tier starts.
Planning a base around 20-weight stacks
The arithmetic is simple enough to do on the back of a saddle:
- One generator evening: a few gasoline, so a handful of oil. 20 oil is three full cycles, which is 15 gasoline and more uptime than most solo sessions use.
- One forge build: 400 oil, which is four stacks and 80 weight.
- One Chemistry Bench habit: paste and polymer run continuously, so oil demand creeps rather than spikes.
That last point is the trap. Players budget oil for the generator and forget the Chemistry Bench, which burns through paste and polymer at a rate that quietly doubles fuel demand. If your base is expanding, the crafting guide shows the station costs that pull oil in every direction.
The gasoline page and the oil page are the same page
Gasoline is 6 oil and 5 hide at a Refining Forge, and the full consumer list lives on how to get gasoline. Read the two together: this page decides where the oil comes from, that page decides where it goes.
If you are choosing a map partly on oil access, the resources tier list ranks it against the rest of the set, and the resources strategy page explains how to keep a fuel buffer without hoarding.