Crude oil

Crude oil lies underground in lenses, with a little air trapped on top, and leaks up to the surface as bitumen.

How to find it

• Bitumen puddles: a giant oil lode sends 3 to 5 thin conduits up to the surface, each ending under a bitumen plug and a puddle. A small lens has 2 or 3 conduits that stop 2 to 8 m under the ground in a bitumen stain: found by digging or from a cave, where a conduit looks like a black pillar.
• Depth: lens centres lie 20 to 60 m deep, in a shale shell, an air pocket above the oil.
• Giant lodes: one within 1.5 km of the start, eight on the globe, under plains.
• Light a bitumen puddle with a torch (right-click standing): it burns for ever, a beacon over the oil at night. Water puts it out; standing in the flame hurts.

How to take it

• Bucket: standing, scoop a whole cubic metre (64 voxels); crouching, one voxel. Oil taken is gone from the lens.
• Field pump: driven by a shaft (best at 30 turns a minute), it pumps oil in a 9 x 9 m square down to 32 m under it, even when its land is not loaded; pipes then carry it to a Storage tank or the Refinery.

What it is for

• The Refinery: 1 m³ gives kerosene, petrol and diesel (16 voxels each), natural gas and a tar; or plastic.
• Fuel: a full bucket burns 20 s in any fire machine; the generator burns it from its tank.

Why it exists

Oil is the gate to plastic, and plastic to electronics: every circuit board needs it.