You can prep every sub, torque every joint, and verify every detonator, but sometimes it’s the smallest components that bring everything to a halt. This was one of those jobs—everything ready for plug setting during a wireline and perforating operation. Logging cable was good. Wireline truck dialed in. Pressure control equipment steady. Then came the …
Some lessons in the wireline world come quietly, buried in data logs or subtle tension fluctuations. Others? They come crashing through the windshield. It was a typical day on a cased hole logging job. We were already past the first perforation well depth and preparing to reposition for the second shot. The downhole tools were …
You never forget the sound of silence when you’re expecting a bang. We were running a standard job in a cased hole wireline setting—deploying a mechanical plug using a familiar setting tool. The gear was prepped, the wireline truck humming, pressure control equipment tight, and all downhole tools configured. I had done this many times …
You don’t forget the moment you lift a lubricator and see that your wireline has been cleanly severed. Not pinched. Not tangled. Cut. We were wrapping up a wireline well logging job, a typical run in a cased hole wireline setup. The job was going smoothly. All safety and pressure control protocols were in place. …
There’s a saying in the wireline business: the little things will get you. And on one particular run, a single nut almost cost us a full day of work and, potentially, a whole lot more. We were deep into a wireline and perforating job—standard cased hole logging in a high-activity zone. The downhole tools were …
Some jobs punch harder than others—not because the pressure control fails, or the formation collapses, but because of something that seems so small it slips right past even the sharpest crews. For me, that lesson came on a wireline logging run that nearly turned into a disaster, all thanks to a set of crossed armors. …
Shallow wells have their own unique challenges—and I learned that firsthand during a TCP squeeze perforation job that didn’t go quite as expected. We were called out for what was meant to be a routine wireline perforating operation using a ball drop firing head. The target: a relatively shallow formation, less than 700 feet deep. …
There are jobs that teach you about tools, and then there are jobs that teach you about failure. This was one of those days—the kind that stays with you and ends up becoming part of your personal wireline safety SOP. It happened on what was supposed to be a straightforward cased hole well services run. …
There are days in the wireline world when things don’t go as planned. One particular job still lingers in my memory—not because of what we ran, but because of what we didn’t. We were on-site for what should have been a routine cased hole wireline perforation run. The tools were rigged, pressure control equipment was …
As wireline engineers, we deal with critical operations every day, and safety is always our top priority. One operation that carries inherent risks is downloading explosives from the toolstring, particularly when dealing with misruns, canceled operations, or any unexpected issues that require us to safely remove the explosives from the wellbore. Recently, we encountered an …
