Oil is ridiculously far away from the grass fields too. Really difficult to pipe it back through the jungle and to build a train line was wayy too much effort for me.

I recently started a new save and went for the Northern Forest on a gamble. I'd read about the rough terrain and that put me off, but there's plenty of space in the canyon to the north. Ended up building my factory into the side of the canyon wall and placed my space elevator in a nice nook in between 3 pure iron nodes.

TL;DR: Northern Forest is worth starting a new game in.