When something goes wrong downhole, the clock starts immediately. Every hour a well sits idle costs money, and the faster the right people are on the phone asking the right questions, the faster you’re back online.
Lucky Rental Tool’s fishermen have been solving downhole problems across the Permian Basin for decades. Below, they answer the questions operators, engineers, and company men ask most about oilfield fishing jobs – from the ones that come up every day to the ones that require a little more finesse.
The Most Common Oilfield Fishing Jobs
What is the most frequent fishing job in the Permian Basin?
Stuck or parted ESPs – electric submersible pumps. They come up in cycles, but it’s consistent, recurring work. On most days, Lucky’s fishermen are handling at least one.
Beyond ESPs, what other downhole problems come up every day?
Alongside ESP work, three other job types are handled almost every day:
- Parted tubing: one of the most common calls Lucky receives
- Stuck packers: a downhole sealing tool that can become lodged in the wellbore
- Stuck TAC (tubing anchor catcher): a tool run at the bottom of the production string to hold tubing in tension; if the tubing parts, the TAC catches it and prevents it from falling to the bottom
These four job types – ESPs, parted tubing, stuck packers, and stuck TACs – make up the core of Lucky’s day-to-day fishing work.
Which scenarios are common but less frequent?
Several job types come through multiple times a year without being daily occurrences:
- Parted casing
- Reda cable: a specific brand of ESP cable
- Capillary tubing (CT) line
- Stuck sucker rods in casing: typically follows a parted tubing situation where rods are left in the casing; requires precision or the problem compounds quickly
- Stuck coiled tubing: an endless pipe used on cleanout and drillouts; when it gets stuck, a rig has to be moved in to fish it with conventional pipe
How a Fishing Job Works
What does a parted tubing or stuck pipe recovery look like from start to finish?
It starts with two questions: what size tubing and what size casing? Those answers determine the correct overshot and grapples for the job. From there, the goal is to tie the tubing back together and free whatever is on the bottom.
If that isn’t possible, the next step is rigging up a wireline truck, running a free-point tool to identify exactly where the pipe is stuck, and cutting the tubing. At that point, the job typically moves into stuck-TAC or stuck-packer territory.
For stuck pipe, wireline operations come first. Locate the stuck point, and if possible, determine why it got stuck. That second part is the critical one. Understanding why the pipe is stuck determines the right approach: run a jarring assembly to jar the fish loose, or run a washover operation to clean the debris around the tubing, packer, or TAC before recovery.
The whole process follows a flowchart. Each question answered in sequence dictates the next step. The challenge is that the fish is two miles away. All you have is the information coming to the surface and the experience to interpret it correctly. Wellbore conditions add another layer: even wells that appear vertical can have significant dog leg severity (DLS). Operators are increasingly kicking wells off at a high point, then dropping them back to vertical before drilling laterals further down. Lucky’s fishermen account for that. A well that looks straightforward on paper isn’t always straightforward downhole.
Why does the first move matter so much?
Because a wrong first move doesn’t just delay the job. It can make the problem significantly harder and more expensive to fix.
A wrong first move doesn’t just delay the job. It can make the problem harder and more expensive to fix. Correctly identifying the problem is the primary task in most oilfield fishing jobs. Once you know what you’re dealing with, the fix is generally not that difficult. It’s the diagnosis that separates an experienced fishing team from one that’s guessing.
Do downhole cameras help?
Rarely. They require crystal-clear fluid in the wellbore to be effective, which limits their usefulness to about 3-5% of situations. In a flooded wellbore, which is most of the time, they’re largely ineffective.
When the Job Gets More Complicated
What makes ESP recovery different from standard pipe retrieval?
ESPs require a gentler approach. They’re assembled in segments, often 6 to 10 of them, so getting too aggressive risks compounding the problem. Segments can be pulled one at a time without making things worse; it just extends the job.
Most ESPs have lock plates, and methods exist to remove the lock plate and latch onto the fish in a single run. Casing size is one of the most critical variables. The tools exist to fish ESPs in any casing size, but larger casing opens up more options for what can and can’t be done.
What does a casing repair fishing job involve?
The first step is identifying what type of casing problem you’re dealing with. Is the casing parted? Collapsed? Cemented in with a bad spot? Each scenario takes a different approach, and the right call depends on correctly reading what’s happening downhole.
Lucky has the equipment and personnel to address nearly any casing problem, including proprietary tools designed and built in-house for specific scenarios. Whether a repair is financially worth doing is the operator’s call. Lucky Rental Tool’s role is to lay out what the repair will likely involve, provide a rough cost estimate, and let the operator run their numbers.
How does fishing in open hole differ from cased hole?
There are significantly more variables. Open hole can have washouts: voids where the fish moves beyond reach. Tool size is still constrained by the casing above, so dimensional limits remain even as the wellbore becomes less predictable. Formation issues can also come into play in ways that don’t occur in cased hole. Open hole work requires more downhole experience.
What happens when conditions change mid-job?
It’s a daily reality of oilfield fishing services. An operator believes the problem is one thing; after working through it, the actual problem turns out to be something else. A common example: pulling perfectly good tubing and hitting a section that’s completely damaged, and looks like stovepipe. You may have to pull it apart one piece at a time before getting back to clean tubing. Recognizing when conditions change and adjusting in real time is a core part of what experienced fishermen do.
Mistakes That Make the Job Harder
What’s the most damaging mistake an operator can make before calling?
Pulling parted tubing off of stuck rods and exposing sucker rods in the casing. When tubing is already parted and rods are stuck, pulling that tubing out of the hole removes any control over the situation. The correct move is to leave the tubing in place and call for expert advice on how to approach it. Doing it in a controlled way makes all the difference between a manageable fishing job and a serious problem.
What does a failed pump catcher mean for an ESP fishing job?
It means the pump can end up in the well’s curve, which makes recovery more complicated. Run pump catchers under ESPs, and maintain them. ESP failure is costly enough on its own. A failed pump catcher that sends the pump into the curve makes the job much harder.
How does poor record-keeping affect a fishing job?
It forces guessing on variables that could meaningfully change the approach. When a well has changed hands and the history didn’t transfer, fishermen are working without information they could use to make better decisions. Keeping complete, accurate well files, including any prior repairs, casing work, and wellbore anomalies, is one of the most practical things an operator can do before a fishing situation ever comes up.
How do engineers learn what tools are available?
Largely through direct communication with Lucky Rental Tool’s team. Engineers aren’t always familiar with the full range of available oilfield fishing tools – the inventory is extensive, and the right tool for a given situation isn’t always obvious until you’ve seen a few. Lucky addresses it directly: they send pictures of specific mills and tools to engineers on location, walk through the pros and cons of each, and explain how they apply to the situation at hand.
Operators send pictures back, too, especially on unusual fish, and the team works through the approach together. There’s a significant amount of photo exchange happening in the oilfield, and it’s one of the more effective ways that knowledge transfers between experienced fishermen and the engineers overseeing the job.
And if the right tool doesn’t exist? Lucky builds it. If a specific job calls for something that can’t be sourced, Lucky’s relationship with around-the-clock machine shops means a custom tool can be fabricated and on-site quickly.
Working with Lucky
Oilfield fishing jobs don’t wait for business hours. A stuck ESP or parted tubing means production is stopped, and every hour it stays that way costs money. Lucky Rental Tool is available 24/7 out of Hobbs, New Mexico, and Midland, Texas, with the tools, the fishermen, and the combined experience to diagnose the problem fast and get the right solution in the hole the first time.
Over 90% of Lucky’s customers become repeat customers. That’s not a coincidence. It’s what happens when a fishing team consistently makes the right call, gets the job done efficiently, and earns the trust that brings operators back.
Ready to get back online? Call Lucky Rental Tool today.
- Midland, TX: 432-563-9777
- Hobbs, NM: 575-433-7777
Learn more about Lucky’s fishing services, and rental tools and BOP equipment.