Some days in wireline, it’s not the explosives, the perforating gun, or the wireline truck that nearly stop the job—it’s something as simple as a dirty hose end.

We were on a high-pressure cased hole well services job, setting up to run a wireline perforating gun downhole. Everything looked good from the outside—riglock secure, pressure control equipment in place, and the wireline unit calibrated and standing by. But when we tested the blowout preventer (BOP) system, the rams didn’t close fully.

That’s when the alarms went off in my head.

As a wireline engineer, I’ve seen my share of BOP issues. The ram BOP is a lifeline when it comes to maintaining well integrity during wireline and perforating operations. If the rams don’t function properly, nothing else can proceed—not production logging services, not pipe recovery, not even a basic cased hole logging pass. In this case, we were supposed to be shooting across a perforation well target zone, and that delay could’ve compromised the whole wireline services oil and gas schedule for the client.

We quickly discovered the issue: dirt and grime had contaminated the hydraulics controlling the rams. The seals were compromised, causing an internal hydraulic leak. That meant the rams couldn’t travel their full distance. They wouldn’t fully close around the wireline cable—definitely not something you want to happen when you’re dealing with live tools, perforating systems, or downhole pipe recovery.

The root cause was basic, but damaging: dirty hose ends. While connecting and disconnecting hydraulic lines during rig-up, someone had laid a fitting down in the dirt—unprotected and uncleaned. That tiny bit of contamination had caused the backup o-rings to roll and cut, leading to a hydraulic failure. In wireline tech, we often talk about the complexities of logging cable, caliper logs, or advanced wireline control systems, but sometimes it all boils down to simple discipline.

I’ve always told my crews during oil field safety training and wireline courses—cleanliness is control. This situation reinforced that message like nothing else. That day, we flushed and cleaned the system, inspected every hose, and reinstalled with care. We ended up running the job later than planned, but we avoided a serious wireline safety issue. And we documented every step—for the client, and for our own records.

Wireline service providers have to be accountable from surface to bottomhole. Whether we’re dealing with cased hole wireline, cement bond logs, eline services, or even plug and abandon operations, we are only as reliable as our weakest practice. And that includes keeping hose fittings out of the mud.

So if you’re new to the wireline business or in one of those early wireline courses wondering what’s really important—here’s one lesson I’ll never stop teaching:

Take care of the small things before they become big problems.
Because in this business, even a speck of dirt can shut down the entire operation.