Relieving Oil Stress .15

In order to allow as much heavy oil being refined I am storing excess petroleum and light oil. For this question, lets assume strictly petroleum.

The wiki recommends creating solid fuel. But I don't agree because of this simple math:

petroleum barrels: 250 per barrel, 10 per stack = 2500 units per stack
petroleum solid fuel: 20 per block, 50 per stack = 1000 units per stack

Am I wrong? Or am I missing something?

Your math checks out, it is indeed more space efficient to make barrels. It's also faster, you need 1 second to fill a barrel and 1 second to make a barrel for 2 seconds per 250 vs 3 seconds per 20.

It does however require a significant investment of steel. One steel plate per barrel, which is 5 iron ore each. Solid fuel how ever doesn't require any extra resources.

Which is better depends on your current surplus, the benefit of barrels is of course that they can be emptied as needed.

A third option (which requires a bit more map-space but meh) is Storage tanks, at 45 iron (5 steel, 20 iron) it can store 25k liquid as fast as it can be produced and is easily reversible as well.