In order to unlock The Lube Must Flow, I need to Yeet barrels of Lubricant. Is the intent that I should drop the lubricant from space? It is after Operation Iron Man. But if there is a trick to making the initial lubricant on Rubia, I don't want to skip that.

Yes. Lubricant must be imported.

I changed it recently from barrels of light oil after some players automatically did the trigger tech while still on Rubia, and then did not notice that they had unlocked the lubricant technology on the technology tree.