PikkaBird wrote:andythenorth wrote:Oil is boring to transport, but the products of oil are necessary. IRL, a great deal of crude oil moves by pipeline, so in FIRS Basic the refinery is just connected by pipe to oil fields "somewhere".
Wut?
In the real world, crude oil is one of the most transported cargos by ship and unit train. On the other hand, many refined oil products (particularly petrol) are vastly more dangerous to carry in bulk, so are produced as close to where they are used as possible.
Every major city in Australia has its own oil refinery. None of them are connected by oil pipeline to anywhere except an unloading dock. Same goes for almost all refineries everywhere (other than extremely close to major oil fields), I expect. If anything, it would be more realistic to have an oil refinery with no
outputs: all refined products are delivered locally to the city in which it is located.
Particularly in North America, the continent is too far spread out both geographically and population-wise for oil and natural gas to be transported by rail or ship in an efficient manner. The majority of oil production comes from either northern Alaska, Texas/Oklahoma/Arizona, and the Gulf Coast offshore fields. Pipeline is the most efficient manner to transport these products over thousands of miles, traveling at up to 6 m/s.
The Trans-Alaskan Pipeline transports oil from the northern oil fields to a southern distribution point, where it is then transported by ship along the Pacific Ocean to the Seattle / British Columbia area, where it's then transported again by pipe throughout most of Canada and parts of the Canadian/US border. Western Canadian oilfields also ship mainly via pipeline to the Canadian east coast. Most of the offshore platforms in the Gulf Coast off the Southern edge of the US is also transported by underwater pipelines to collection centers in Texas, Louisiana and Alabama, where they're usually consolidated into other facilities before they're transported to refineries located in the midwest and the northeast. The US west coast generally for the most part keeps to itself with smaller oil fields in southern California and imports from Mexico, both on land and offshore, but again all fed by pipeline for the most part.
Now, once the petroleum and natural gas hit the refineries, rail becomes the most efficient manner to transport the refined products to anyplace that isn't within the immediate region of the refinery, and for many refineries they're built far away from population centers and the areas where their products are needed.
In the game, I don't think it would be unrealistic to say that if a refinery is within so many tiles of an oil well that the refinery should be able to collect from it, the closer the refinery the more the well provides to the closer refinery, unless there is a station near the well that is picking up the oil.
I like the chemical tankers.