Pigs & Rabbits

Oilfield pipe lays around a lot waiting to be used; it sits on sills on the ground, on pipe racks in the yard, in pipe bins and on pipe trailers on...standby. The longer it sits around the yard doing nothing, waiting for a job, the more likely it is that some living creature in the universe is going to consider it home.

Birds build nests in pipe, rats will get in the deer corn stored in the shop, take it outside and store it a joint of tubing. Armadillos, possums, rabbits, squirrels, foxes and even cyotes will homestead a joint of 7 inch OD casing and live there comfortably, safe and secure, rent free, for long periods of time.

Rattlesnakes like production tubing, which when you knock on their front door will make your hair stand on end like Buckwheat's. I saw a chicken snake the size of a python balled up in a joint of 5 1/2 inch casing one time and that sumbitch was NOT coming out. We left him to his dwelling.

So when it comes time to actually using this pipe, its a good idea to always run the critters out, before it goes down hole.

Its a day ruined, and a pissed off tool pusher, when 4,000 feet of production casing is run in the hole, then can't be pumped thru the float shoe because there is a dead, or highly confused armadillo stuck in the pipe cooking in 140 degree bottom hole temperature.

To check that the pipe is free of critter homes, we "rabbit" it, Rabbiting is a term as old as the oilfield itself. Depending on the drift of the casing, or tubing, (different than inside diameter) we'll pick something that will slide thru the pipe when we pick it up in the derrick and comes falling out the bottom.

Rabbits can be any size, shape or color you want as long as they are the right OD to drift the pipe and heavy enough to fall. If there is a hair ball in the tubing, you want to knock it out the bottom with the right rabbit. Most pipe is drifted and pressure tested in the pipe yard; on location you just want to check to make sure you can see thru it before running it.

Often you can drop a rabbit and the obstruction in the pipe is such that the rabbit doesn't reappear on the other end. Whoa be it to a hand that drops a rabbit down some joint of pipe then can't account for its existence with the NEXT joint of pipe is run. Holy mackeral; that's a hanging offense.

One time my rig hands and a Franks casing crew picked up a joint of 5 1/2 inch production casing that had been on the racks in the yard, dropped a rabbit in the collar end, slid the joint up the V-door and vertically in the derrick with the block...the rabbit fell out on the floor, a big fat, pissed-off skunk with it.

There were nine of us on the floor at the time and I've never seen a rig floor get evacuated faster than that; there were hands sliding down the V-door, running down the stairs, jumping over the rails into the mud pits, slamming dog house doors behind them, all in shear terror.

The skunk wandered around the floor an hour looking for somebody to get even with, finally found a way back into the woods and we all went back to work.

Pipeline hands weld and lay their pipe in the ground, then before hooking everything up they pressure test the line with a pig. Basically for the same reasons as one runs a rabbit.

I am told black bears liked to winter in the 48 Inch OD Keystone pipe that set on the ground forever up north, on standby waiting to be actually used.

To clear the pipeline of debris hands launch the pig on one end, pressure up on the line and the pig zings thur the pipe and lands, or gets blown out on the other end; clear and ready to close.

Here is a clever bunch of roustabouts in West Texas about ready to hook up some gas pipeline to a compressor station and instead of "pigging" the line before final tie in, they decided to break tradition and to run a rabbit thru it.

Click to watch.

After 73 years of this oilfield shit I still am enthralled to see, and hear, of the dumb stuff hands come up with to keep themselves entertained.