Some days in wireline, it’s not the explosives, the perforating gun, or the wireline truck that almost stops the job, it’s something as basic 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. From the outside, everything seemed good: the riglock was secure, pressure control equipment was in place, and the wireline unit was calibrated and ready to go. 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 do not work properly, nothing else can be done, including production logging services, pipe recovery, and 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 wrap around the wireline cable, which is absolutely not desirable while working with live equipment, 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 personnel during oil field safety training and wireline courses that cleanliness equals 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 noted every procedure for the customer 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 industry or taking one of those early wireline courses and wondering what’s truly 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 single grain of dirt might cause the entire operation to fail.