Fallout 4: How To Farm Oil [Locations]

A quick guide on how to farm oil in Fallout 4!

Oil is yet another important crafting component in Fallout 4 that players will require a lot of, especially if they intend to craft many explosives. On top of this, it is also an essential part of Settlement management since important machines like generators and water purifiers require oil to function correctly. Oil is simply an extremely versatile and useful resource in this game, and so this guide will show you all of the best ways to acquire large amounts of it for yourself.

Key Takeaways
  • Like many other basic essentials in Fallout 4, Oil is also one of them to craft various items such as foods and explosives.
  • Oil can either be extracted from Items by using the Scrapper Perk or you can find them in different locations on the map.
  • These are some of the items from which you can extract oil:
  • Industrial Size Shortening, Paint Can, Cooking Oil, Cutting Fluid, Oil Canister, Lantern, Soap, and Blowtorch.
  • Additionally, there are many locations where you can farm oil. These are some of the locations containing the most oil:
  • Dunwich Borers, Red Rockets, Boston Airport, Jamaica Plain, Hardware Town, Super-Duper Mart, Acadia, Vault 118, Fort Strong, and Fort Hagen.
  • Mainly, oil is great for making turrets which are the best kind of defense against enemies for your base.

Oil In Fallout 4

Fallout 4 oil
An in-game look of the Oil

To start with, players will have to invest at least one point into the Scrapper perk. Without this, they cannot extract oil from Junk items that contain the resource.

If you have some more points to spare, then it’s also a good idea to bring this perk up to level 3. This almost doubles the yield you gain from breaking down items, significantly cutting down on the grinding you have to do.

It also bears mentioning that Oil can often be found together with a few other resources. So if you’re on the hunt for, say, Fallout Aluminum or Fallout 4 Adhesive, the chances are that some of those same items may contain oil. That being said, let’s look at all of the items that contain this component.

How To Farm Oil

Fallout 4 oil
Paint Cans.

Each of the following items contains a varying amount of Oil in Fallout:

  • Aluminum Canister – 1 Unit.
  • Blowtorch – 1 Unit.
  • Condensed Fog – 1 Unit.
  • Flip lighter – 1 Unit.
  • Gas Canister – 1 Unit.
  • Gold Plated Flip Lighter – 1 Unit.
  • Soap – 1 Unit.
  • Used Oil Can – 1 Unit.
  • Aluminum Oil Can – 2 Units.
  • Blue Paint – 2 Units.
  • Lantern – 2 Units.
  • Mr. Handy fuel – 2 Units.
  • Oil Canister – 2 Units.
  • Paint Can – 2 Units.
  • Red Paint – 2 Units.
  • Yellow Paint – 2 Units.
  • Cooking Oil – 3 Units.
  • Cutting Fluid – 3 Units.
  • Oil Can – 4 Units.
  • Industrial Size Shortening – 5 Units.

These are all of the twenty-one items that will give you oil once broken down. Apart from Condensed Fog and Red paint, which were introduced with the Far Harbor DLC, all the remaining items can be found in the base game.

Oil Farming Locations

Fallout 4 oil
Cambridge Police Station.

Now we can’t list all of the locations in the game that may contain oil because that range is in the hundreds. So we’re going to be breaking that list down a lot.

Instead of wasting your time with areas that only contain one or two junk items, we’ll be listing the most worthwhile farming spots in the wasteland. So here is our list of the best Fallout 4 oil farming locations:

  • Boston Mayoral Shelter: An Industrial Size Shortening is found inside the supply room of the bunker.
  • Dunwich Borers: This area is a large and multi-layered quarry, so there are a lot of metallic items to loot here. A number of these, such as Gas Canisters, Oil Canisters, and Lanterns, can be broken down into at least 30 units of oil.
  • Red Rockets: Before the war, Red Rocket was a fueling company that operated within the Commonwealth, so they had well over 40 different gas stations scattered around the game world. Each of these locations is littered with items like Gas Canisters that can give players a lot of oil.
  • Super-Duper Mart: This abandoned grocery store in Lexington is home to four different cans of Mr. Handy fuel that yield a total of 8 units of oil. They can be found right next to the main entrance of the location.
  • Boston Airport: Four Blowtorches can be found at the Boston Airport, inside Liberty Prime’s storage hanger.
  • Jamaica Plain: The houses around the potential settlement of Jamaica Plain contain a few bottles of Cooking Oil, each of which yields three units of the component.
  • Hardware Town: Three Blue Paint cans can be taken from the paint mixer in the Hardware Town building for six oil.
  • Nuka-Town Backstage: 22 Blue Paint cans, 29 Yellow Paint cans, 14 Red Paint cans, and nine regular Paint cans can be found all around this location for a whopping 148 oil units of oil. This is the largest single deposit of the resource in the entire game.
  • Acadia: Six cans of Condensed Fog can be found within the Acadia Observatory.
  • Fort Hagen: Players can find four Flip Lighters in the Fort Hagen area. One is in the main compound, and the remaining three are in the hangar.
  • Park Street Station: While exploring this underground area, you can pick up four Gas Canisters scattered all over the floor.
  • Vault 118: The dining areas of the Vault contain three bottles of Cooking oil, for a total of 9 oil.
  • Cambridge Police Station: Three Flip Lighters can be found inside the police station during the ‘Fire Support’ main quest.
  • Fort Strong: A single Industrial Size Shortening can be taken from a table in this building’s kitchen.

This has been our Fallout 4 oil farming guide. We hope that you can use it to craft all of the Molotov cocktails you want.

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Huzaifa is eXputer's Review Editor, who’s all about RPG games. He’s got several years of experience critically judging games and writing his unbiased thoughts on them. You can also find his content published on sites like Twinfinite & GearNuke. Huzaifa has been gaming for 23+ years, during which he managed to amass 400+ hours on Elden Ring! You can follow his gaming activity on his Xbox and Steam Profiles.

Experience: 5+ years || Previously Worked At GearNuke & Twinfinite || Mainly Covers RPG Guides & Latest Games Reviews || Education: Bachelors in Hospitality.

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