--- title: "Upstream vs downstream: meaning in oil, software, decisions | Len P. van der Hof" description: "Upstream vs downstream: upstream is nearer the source, downstream later in the flow. One river picture, a six-field table, and why it depends where you stand." image: "https://lenvanderhof.com/media/generated/blog-hero-upstream-vs-downstream-v1.31c10af669f0.wide.webp" --- [Venture Building](https://lenvanderhof.com/en/blog/category/venture-building/) Research guide # Upstream vs downstream: one river picture that explains oil, supply chains, software, and decisions Every flow has a source and an end. The two words only tell you where you stand. Len P. van der HofPublished 13 October 20268 min read Same river, same water. Which side you are on decides what reaches you. Direct answer Upstream means earlier in a flow, closer to the source; downstream means later, closer to where things end up. The picture comes from rivers and works across fields: in oil, exploration and production versus refining and sales; in supply chains, suppliers versus customers; in software, the original project versus the products built on it; in data pipelines, the task before versus the tasks after; in decisions, the choice versus its later effects. The labels are relative: the same team can be downstream of one group and upstream of another. ## Key takeaways - Upstream is earlier and nearer the source. Downstream is later and nearer the end. - X is downstream of Y when X receives what Y sends. - The labels describe position, not importance. Ask: upstream of whom? - The upstream party acts; the downstream party pays. The fix is to put downstream needs into upstream planning. - For decisions, the downstream side is where delayed costs land on people who were not in the meeting. **Upstream is where something comes from; downstream is where it goes.** In any flow (water, oil, parts, code, data, work, the effects of a decision) upstream means earlier and closer to the source, and downstream means later and closer to the end. The labels are relative. They tell you where you stand, not who matters. The rest of this page maps that one picture onto six fields, shows why the same team can be both, and tells what a real river taught Europe about who pays downstream. ## What is the river picture? Stand on a bridge and look at the water. Cambridge Dictionary defines upstream as “(moving) on a river or stream towards its origin” and downstream as “in the direction a river or stream is flowing”. Whatever enters the water above you reaches you. Whatever you drop in reaches everyone below you. Business English borrowed both words. Cambridge gives upstream as “relating to an earlier stage in a process or series of events”, and downstream as “something that happens later in a process or series of events”. Merriam-Webster adds an industrial sense for downstream that includes “the stages (such as marketing) after manufacture”. Two rules carry over from the river to every field below: 1. **Things flow one way.** Water, oil, parts, code, data and consequences move from upstream to downstream. 2. **Position is relative.** “X is downstream of Y” means X receives what Y sends. Cambridge’s example: “Higher concentrations of some chemicals were found in fish downstream of sewage-treatment plants.” ## What do upstream and downstream mean in each field? FieldUpstreamDownstreamExampleOil and gasFinding and producing crude oil and gasRefining, product sales and marketingA drilling platform is upstream; a refinery and a filling station are downstreamSupply chainsYour suppliers and their raw materials or partsYour distribution, through to the end customerHypothetical bakery: the flour mill is upstream, the shops selling its bread are downstreamSoftware projects and forksThe original project where changes are made and releasedThe distributions, products and forks built on itThe Linux kernel is upstream of Fedora; Red Hat Enterprise Linux is downstream of FedoraData pipelinesThe task that must finish firstThe tasks that run after it and use its outputA nightly data import is upstream of the report that reads itTeams and workflowsThe team whose work you depend onThe teams that depend on yoursThe team that owns the customer database is upstream of the team that builds invoicesDecisionsThe choice, and the assumptions behind itThe later effects on partners, customers, staff and regulatorsA pricing change is upstream of the partner margin it squeezes months later **Oil and gas.** The US Energy Information Administration (EIA) puts it plainly: “Upstream refers to crude oil exploration, production, and other operations prior to refining. Downstream refers to refinery operations, product sales, and marketing.” EIA also names a middle segment, **midstream**: companies that transport and store crude oil and natural gas, typically with tanker ships, pipelines or storage facilities. **Supply chains.** The Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS) describes a supply chain as looking upstream to your suppliers and their raw materials or components, and downstream from your own activities to delivery to the end consumer. **Software.** In open source, Red Hat explains, an upstream is “the source repository and project where contributions happen and releases are made”, and “the contributions flow from upstream to downstream”. A bug fixed upstream can benefit every project built on it, which is why Red Hat describes working “upstream first”. On GitHub, if you copy a project to build your own version (a fork), the documentation has you add a link named upstream that points back to the original. **Data pipelines.** In Apache Airflow, open-source software for scheduling workflows such as data pipelines, each step is a task, and the documentation says: “By default, a Task will run when all of its upstream (parent) tasks have succeeded.” **Teams.** Eric Evans’s *Domain-Driven Design Reference*, a summary of definitions and patterns for software design, defines an upstream-downstream relationship between two groups in which the upstream group’s actions affect the downstream group’s success, but not the other way round. His example is the river itself: “If two cities are along the same river, the upstream city’s pollution primarily affects the downstream city.” **Decisions.** This is the sense behind “downstream effects” on this site. The decision sits upstream. Its later costs land downstream, on partners, customers and regulators who were not in the meeting. [What are downstream effects?](https://lenvanderhof.com/en/blog/what-are-downstream-effects/) gives the full definition. ## Why can the same thing be upstream and downstream? Because the words describe position, not rank. Red Hat’s own example: Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is based on Fedora, and Fedora pulls from many original projects. In Red Hat’s words, “Fedora is downstream of these projects and RHEL is downstream of Fedora.” Fedora is downstream and upstream at the same time. Your team works the same way. You are downstream of whoever supplies your inputs and upstream of whoever uses your output. When someone says “that is an upstream problem”, ask: upstream of whom? Three confusions to avoid: - **Upstream is not “more important”.** It is earlier. Power does often sit upstream, though: Evans warns that a downstream team “can be helpless, at the mercy of upstream priorities”. - **Direction follows the flow, not the org chart.** An analyst who owns a data source is upstream of the chief executive’s dashboard. - **The fields stretch the words differently.** In oil, downstream reaches all the way to selling fuel. In software, upstream is also a place: the project you send your fixes back to. ## What happens when the upstream party does not look downstream? On 1 November 1986, a fire broke out in a warehouse belonging to Sandoz near Basel, Switzerland. According to the International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine (ICPR), firefighting water mixed with up to thirty tons of pesticides flowed into the Rhine and killed fish and other organisms along hundreds of kilometers of the river. The Swiss water research institute Eawag recalls that the firefighting water was red, and that images of dead fish went around the world. The cost landed downstream. The ICPR writes that it was the first time citizens “from Switzerland downstream to the Netherlands” showed solidarity with the river. Ministers from the Rhine states then adopted the Rhine Action Programme, coordinated by the ICPR, with two aims: halve the discharges of 40 dangerous chemicals within 10 years, and make the Rhine clean enough for salmon to return. Two honest footnotes from Eawag: the river’s life recovered relatively quickly, within a few months, and the accident led to major progress in water-quality monitoring, legal rules and risk reduction in the chemical industry. It is Evans’s river example in real life: the upstream party acts, the downstream parties pay, and the lasting fix put downstream needs into upstream rules. ## How do you use the river picture for your own decisions? **DOWNSTREAM** is an operating protocol for delayed consequences: ten moves for naming who pays later, and where, before you commit. It comes from *The Downstream Effects*, a book by Len van der Hof that is in production and not for sale yet. It is an operating heuristic, not a validated risk instrument, and you do not need the book to use it. The [DOWNSTREAM framework page](https://lenvanderhof.com/frameworks/downstream/) has the same moves. 1. **Detect.** Before you commit, list who and what sits downstream of the decision. 2. **Observe.** After launch, watch what actually happens in the places the decision touches. 3. **Weigh.** Compare the real later costs with the first win, not with a wish. 4. **Navigate.** Choose a path that still works when the later effect arrives: accept, reduce or avoid each branch. 5. **Stream effects.** Look at each effect over several time horizons, so the cost is not dumped on one later quarter. 6. **Trace.** Keep the chain from decision to effect written down, so a surprise many months later can still be linked to its cause. 7. **Review.** Reopen the map after the decision ships, on a fixed rhythm, and compare it with what really happened. 8. **Effects on stakeholders.** Name who actually pays: a partner, a regulator, a network, a user. 9. **Assess systemic risk.** Find the point where local damage stops being local and spreads. 10. **Mitigate.** Install the smallest control that changes where the cost lands, with an owner and a test. A worked example, hypothetical. An online shop wants to rename a product field in its catalog export, because the old name confuses new staff. The product team that owns the export is upstream. Everyone who reads the export is downstream. - **Detect.** List every reader of the export: the marketplace feed that lists the products, finance’s margin report, and the customer-service templates that quote product details. - **Effects on stakeholders.** Listings could drop off the marketplace until someone remaps the field. Finance’s report could quietly show blanks. Support could send customers wrong details. None of those people sit in the product team’s meeting. - **Mitigate.** Keep the old field name alive next to the new one for one release, name an owner who checks each reader, and add a test that fails if a reader still breaks. The decision survives, reshaped rather than killed. For the longer method, including a twenty-minute audit of recent decisions, read [Downstream effects: why the real cost of a decision lands later, and somewhere else](https://lenvanderhof.com/en/blog/downstream-effects/). The book page is [The Downstream Effects](https://lenvanderhof.com/books/the-downstream-effects/). ## Try this today (ten minutes) Draw your own river. 1. Write your team, or your own job, in the middle of a page. 2. On the left, write two things you depend on: people, systems or suppliers. That is your upstream. 3. On the right, write three people or teams who use what you produce. That is your downstream. 4. Pick one downstream name and ask them one question this week: “If I changed [the thing I produce] next week, what would break for you?” 5. Write the answer next to their name. That one line is the start of a detection checklist, and it costs you one conversation. Cite this:Upstream vs downstream: one river picture that explains oil, supply chains, software, and decisions.Len P. van der Hof. [https://lenvanderhof.com/en/blog/upstream-vs-downstream/](https://lenvanderhof.com/en/blog/upstream-vs-downstream/) · Published 13 October 2026. ## Terminology - [DOWNSTREAM](https://lenvanderhof.com/glossary/downstream/) ## Sources 1. [upstream](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/upstream) · Cambridge Dictionary 2. [downstream](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/downstream) · Cambridge Dictionary 3. [Downstream (dictionary entry)](https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/downstream) · Merriam-Webster 4. [Refiner margins unable to fully offset low upstream earnings for integrated oil companies](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=21692) · U.S. Energy Information Administration 5. [Financial Review of the Global Crude Oil and Natural Gas Industry: Upstream 2024](https://www.eia.gov/finance/review/pdf/2024%20Annual%20Financial%20Review%20Upstream%20FINAL.pdf) · U.S. Energy Information Administration 6. [What is a supply chain?](https://www.cips.org/intelligence-hub/supply-chain-management/what-is-a-supply-chain) · Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS) 7. [What is an open source upstream?](https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/what-open-source-upstream) · Red Hat 8. [Configuring a remote repository for a fork](https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-pull-requests/working-with-forks/configuring-a-remote-repository-for-a-fork) · GitHub Docs 9. [Tasks (Apache Airflow documentation)](https://airflow.apache.org/docs/apache-airflow/stable/core-concepts/tasks.html) · The Apache Software Foundation 10. [Domain-Driven Design Reference: Definitions and Pattern Summaries](https://www.domainlanguage.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/DDD_Reference_2015-03.pdf) · Domain Language, Inc. (Eric Evans) 11. [The turning point: the Sandoz accident](https://www.iksr.org/en/icpr/about-us/history/the-turning-point-the-sandoz-accident/) · International Commission for the Protection of the Rhine 12. [Rhine running red, fish dead: 30th anniversary of the Sandoz blaze](https://www.eawag.ch/en/info/portal/news/news-detail/rhine-running-red-fish-dead-30th-anniversary-of-the-sandoz-blaze/) · Eawag 13. [DOWNSTREAM framework](https://lenvanderhof.com/frameworks/downstream/) 14. [The Downstream Effects](https://lenvanderhof.com/books/the-downstream-effects/) 15. [What are downstream effects?](https://lenvanderhof.com/en/blog/what-are-downstream-effects/) 16. [Downstream effects: why the real cost of a decision lands later, and somewhere else](https://lenvanderhof.com/en/blog/downstream-effects/) ## Further reading - [What are downstream effects?](https://lenvanderhof.com/en/blog/what-are-downstream-effects/) - [Downstream effects: why the real cost of a decision lands later, and somewhere else](https://lenvanderhof.com/en/blog/downstream-effects/) - [DOWNSTREAM framework](https://lenvanderhof.com/frameworks/downstream/) - [The Downstream Effects](https://lenvanderhof.com/books/the-downstream-effects/) About the author ## [Len P. van der Hof](https://lenvanderhof.com/en/authors/len-p-van-der-hof/) Entrepreneur, AI Innovator and Venture Builder Len P. van der Hof builds practical AI systems, digital ventures and evidence-informed tools for founders. ```json { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@graph": [ { "@type": "Person", "@id": "https://lenvanderhof.com/#person", "name": "Len P. van der Hof", "alternateName": [ "Len van der Hof", "L.P. van der Hof", "Leendert Pieter van der Hof" ], "honorificSuffix": "MSc", "url": "https://lenvanderhof.com/", "image": [ "https://lenvanderhof.com/photos/len-portrait-1.jpg", "https://lenvanderhof.com/photos/len-portrait-2.jpg", "https://lenvanderhof.com/photos/len-portrait-3.jpg", "https://lenvanderhof.com/photos/len-portrait-4.jpg", "https://lenvanderhof.com/photos/len-speaking.jpg", "https://lenvanderhof.com/photos/len-hero.jpg" ], "jobTitle": "Entrepreneur, AI Innovator and Venture Builder", "description": "Len P. van der Hof, MSc, is a Dutch entrepreneur and AI innovator in Zwijndrecht. 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