Oil in ARK: Survival Evolved comes from ocean nodes, snow biome deposits, creature harvesting, and passive generation from tamed dinos. The best method depends on your level, your map, and how much risk you’re willing to take. Here’s every reliable way to gather oil, from early-game scraping to late-game automation.
Ocean Oil Nodes
The ocean floor is the most oil-dense location on The Island and many other maps. Underwater oil nodes are easy to spot because they release a dark stream of oil that floats upward toward the surface, making them visible from a distance. You’ll find them scattered across the deep ocean, often clustered in groups of three or more.
The challenge is surviving long enough to harvest them. You need a way to breathe underwater (SCUBA gear, Lazarus Chowder, or a water mount with an oxygen bubble like the Basilosaurus) and enough speed to avoid hostile sea creatures. An Ankylosaurus or a Dunkleosteus harvests oil nodes far more efficiently than a pick, pulling significantly more oil per node. If you’re riding a water mount that can’t harvest directly, you’ll need to dismount and use a metal pick.
Snow Biome and Iceberg Deposits
If you’d rather stay on land, oil nodes also spawn across the snow biome and on icebergs around the map’s northern coast. These look like dark, rocky formations on the ground or ice surface. A metal pick works fine here, though an Ankylosaurus still gives better yields per node.
The tradeoff is danger. The snow biome is home to aggressive predators and harsh cold, so you’ll need fur armor or a high-fortitude stat to survive. Icebergs are sometimes safer since fewer predators spawn on them, but getting to them requires a flying mount or a raft. For mid-level players who aren’t ready for deep ocean dives, icebergs are often the sweet spot between risk and reward.
Oil Pumps on Scorched Earth
On the Scorched Earth map (and Ragnarok’s desert region), you can place Oil Pumps on specific oil veins found in the Low Desert and Badlands areas. Once placed, a pump extracts 1 unit of oil every 20 seconds, which works out to about 180 oil per hour with zero effort on your part. You can place multiple pumps on different veins for a steady, automated supply.
Crafting an Oil Pump requires level 60, 24 engram points, and a Fabricator. The materials are 100 metal ingots, 75 silica pearls, and 25 crystal. You also need to have learned the Electrical Generator and Wind Turbine engrams first. The pump itself doesn’t need power to run, though. Just place it on a vein and let it work. Scorched Earth has dozens of oil veins, with heavy clusters around coordinates 36-42 latitude / 66-77 longitude and another group near 49-59 latitude / 76-84 longitude.
Dung Beetles for Passive Oil
Tamed Dung Beetles convert feces into both fertilizer and oil. You place animal droppings into the beetle’s inventory, set it to wander (or keep it in a small enclosed space on wander), and it processes the feces over about 15 minutes. The oil output scales with the size of the feces:
- Human feces: 1 oil
- Small animal feces: 1 oil
- Medium animal feces: 2 oil
- Large animal feces: 3 oil
- Massive animal feces (Titanosaur): 7 oil
This isn’t going to fuel a massive industrial operation, but a few Dung Beetles processing feces from your tamed dinos can keep you supplied for basic crafting needs. The key is keeping a steady flow of droppings. Phiomias fed stimberries produce feces rapidly, making them the ideal pairing with Dung Beetles. A couple of Phiomias and two or three beetles can produce a modest but consistent oil supply without you ever leaving your base.
Basilosaurus: The Oil Factory
A tamed Basilosaurus passively generates oil in its own inventory over time. Based on player testing, a single Basilosaurus produces roughly 20 oil every 25 minutes, which is about 48 oil per hour per creature. You just check its inventory periodically and collect. Since Basilosauruses are also excellent ocean mounts with natural insulation from jellyfish stings and eel shocks, they serve double duty as both a harvesting mount and a passive oil source.
The downside is taming one. Basilosauruses are found in the deep ocean, require hand-feeding while surrounded by hostile mantas that guard them, and the taming process is slow. But once you have one (or better, several), the passive oil generation adds up quickly.
Killing Creatures for Oil
Several creatures drop oil when harvested after being killed. Trilobites are the most accessible early-game source. They’re slow, passive creatures found in shallow water along beaches and rivers. Hitting a dead Trilobite with a pick or harvesting mount yields small amounts of oil, chitin, and silica pearls. For new players without access to the snow biome or deep ocean, farming Trilobites along the coast is the simplest way to get your first oil.
Other oil-dropping creatures include Leeches, Eurypterids (sea scorpions found in deeper water), and Tek creatures. Tek Parasaurs, Tek Stegosauruses, and other Tek variants drop oil, electronics, and scrap metal when harvested, making them a worthwhile kill if you encounter them. A chainsaw or high-damage harvesting dino will maximize the yield from any creature carcass.
Hesperornis Eggs
Hesperornis, the duck-like birds found near rivers and coastlines, lay eggs that can be cooked in a Cooking Pot to produce oil. Each egg yields about 12 oil. This isn’t an efficient primary source since Hesperornis are tricky to tame (they require fish kills to gain trust) and don’t lay eggs at a fast rate. It’s more of a supplemental method if you already have tamed Hesperornis for their golden egg buff and want to put their regular eggs to use rather than letting them spoil.
Best Strategy by Game Stage
Early game, your only realistic options are Trilobites along the beach and the occasional shallow-water oil node if you can hold your breath long enough. A few Trilobite runs will get you enough oil to craft your first few essentials.
Mid-game, once you have a flying mount and fur armor (or an aquatic tame like an Ichthyosaurus), snow biome runs and shallow ocean harvesting become your main supply. Taming a few Dung Beetles at this stage gives you a trickle of passive oil to supplement your runs. An Ankylosaurus is the single biggest upgrade you can make for oil harvesting, whether you’re bringing it to snow nodes or underwater nodes.
Late game, the goal is automation. On Scorched Earth or Ragnarok, Oil Pumps on desert veins produce oil with no ongoing effort. On other maps, a fleet of Basilosauruses parked at your base generates hundreds of oil per hour passively. Combine that with Dung Beetles processing a steady supply of Phiomia droppings, and you may never need to manually farm an oil node again.