In ARK, you refine oil into gasoline by combining 6 oil and 5 hide in a Refining Forge. After about 30 seconds, the forge produces 5 gasoline. That’s the core recipe, and it works the same in both Survival Evolved and Survival Ascended. But there’s more to the process than just knowing the ratio, especially once you need gasoline in bulk.
The Gasoline Recipe
The recipe is simple: 6 oil + 5 hide = 5 gasoline. You place both resources into a Refining Forge that’s already fueled, and the batch finishes in roughly 30 seconds. The forge itself needs fuel to run, and your choice of fuel affects how long it stays lit. Wood burns for 30 seconds per piece, sparkpowder lasts a full minute, and thatch burns through in just 7.5 seconds. If you’re running multiple batches, wood or sparkpowder will save you from constantly refueling.
One detail that trips up newer players: the forge won’t start converting oil and hide into gasoline unless fuel is already burning. Load your fuel first, ignite the forge, then add the oil and hide.
Scaling Up With the Industrial Forge
The standard Refining Forge works fine early on, but it becomes a bottleneck fast. Once you’re running a Fabricator, Chemistry Bench, and generator full-time, you’ll burn through gasoline quickly. The Industrial Forge solves this by refining at 20 times the speed of a regular forge. It also has 100 inventory slots, so you can load up huge batches of oil and hide and walk away.
The recipe stays the same (6 oil and 5 hide per 5 gasoline), but the Industrial Forge chews through the queue so fast that stockpiling gasoline goes from tedious to trivial. If you’re at the stage where you can build one, it’s worth prioritizing. It also smelts metal into ingots at the same 20x rate, so it pulls double duty in your base.
Where to Get Oil
Refining oil is only half the problem. Gathering enough of it is the other half. Your main options depend on your map and progression level.
- Ocean nodes: Black rocks on the ocean floor are the most common source. You’ll need a pickaxe or, ideally, a water mount to harvest them efficiently.
- Surface deposits: Some maps (especially snow biomes) have oil nodes on land, which are easier to reach but often contested.
- Dung Beetles: A tamed Dung Beetle on wander converts feces into oil and fertilizer passively. The output scales with poop size. Small poop yields 2 oil, medium gives 4, large gives 6, and massive poop from creatures like the Brontosaurus produces 14 oil per cycle. Each cycle takes about 15 minutes.
- Basilosaurus: This tamed ocean creature automatically generates oil over time, storing up to 20 in its inventory. The oil does eventually spoil, so check periodically and grab it before it caps out.
Dung Beetles are especially useful on maps where ocean oil is hard to reach. Park a few beetles in your base with a steady supply of feces and you’ll have a passive oil income without ever leaving home.
What Gasoline Powers
Gasoline is the primary fuel for mid-to-late-game structures. The Electrical Generator, Fabricator, Chemistry Bench, and Industrial Grinder all run on it. A single gasoline unit lasts a different amount of time in each structure, but the generator is usually your biggest consumer since it runs continuously to power lights, turrets, refrigerators, and other electrical devices.
Plan your gasoline production around your generator uptime. If you’re running a generator 24/7, you’ll want a steady pipeline of oil coming in, either from regular harvesting runs or passive sources like Dung Beetles and Basilosauruses.
Other Uses for Oil
Not all of your oil should go into gasoline. You also need oil to make jerky in a Preserving Bin. Both Cooked Meat Jerky and Prime Meat Jerky require oil and sparkpowder alongside the cooked meat, and each batch takes 36 minutes to finish. Jerky is a key ingredient in several kibble recipes and high-tier food items, so it’s worth setting aside a portion of your oil supply for it.
Oil is also used in crafting certain items directly at the Fabricator, so keep a reserve rather than converting every last unit into gasoline.
Tips for Efficient Refining
If you’re still using a standard Refining Forge, you can run multiple forges in parallel. Line up three or four, fuel them all, and split your oil and hide across them. This cuts your total wait time significantly until you can build an Industrial Forge.
Hide is rarely the bottleneck, but if you find yourself short, a high-damage carnivore like a Rex or Therizinosaurus harvesting large creatures will keep you stocked. Mammoths, Brontos, and Paracer herds are good targets for bulk hide. Keep the ratio in mind when farming: for every 6 oil you gather, you need 5 hide, so the two resources stay roughly 1:1 in terms of demand.