Pumpjacks require water when deposit mostly depleted

19 votes

Most oil deposits must be injected with CO2 and/or water to cause oil to rise to a level that's accessible to pumpjacks. Requiring water inputs and "oily water" distillation/processing of the output would be more representative of actual oil extraction processes.

Low priority Suggested by: certainOrder (01 Oct, '21) • Upvoted: 07 Feb • Comments: 4

Comments: 4

01 Oct, '21
Yandersen
I think it shall be brine, actually. But island's oil is a very short-term temporary solution to bother with more complexity there anyway. Plus it may not be so intuitive for casual player to understand why pumpjack "requires water to produce oil" unless he/she has some knowledge of the process (many don't).
02 Oct, '21
certainOrder
Yep, brine checks out. And, since that's actually reasonably far down the tech tree, it could be a justification for making the island oil deposit larger. So, the player can still access easy oil at the start, but then must tech into further oil extraction.
03 Oct, '21
jack lockwood
Oh yeh, we need fracking!!
13 Jan
Phooenixification
It's usually water combined with sand and some other chemicals depending on the use and situation, a kind of sludge called proppant. Like certainOrder said it could be further down the tech tree, and the downside is ofcourse the use of sand but could also pollute groundwater, like IRL.

And Yandersen, brine is the main byproduct of fracking.

However i don't think i would like to waste sand to get oil when there are other renewable alternatives. Oil is just a pitstop on the way there.