Cokebusters International

15/10/2026

Before starting a recent mechanical cleaning and tube inspection job, our operators completed the site safety induction, including a hands-on practical session covering working at height and confined space.

Practical training is essential, because these are the situations where preparation really makes all the difference.

Knowing the theory is one thing. Having recently experienced those environments, with the equipment in your hands and an instructor alongside you, is quite another.

It’s the same thinking behind everything else we do before a job: the site walks, the equipment checks and the planning. We always want the people running our equipment to be as well prepared as the equipment itself.

The safety of our operators comes first, before the first pig is run 🦺

09/10/2026

Our Houston team is growing and so are the people in it.

We’re delighted to tell you:

Enrique Medrano has been promoted to Workshop Manager. He’ll lead the coordination and supervision of daily maintenance activities, and the preventive maintenance that keeps our equipment reliable and ready for site.

Liz Gonzalez has been promoted to Logistics Manager. Liz manages the deployment of our people and equipment to site, and she’s also the first point of contact for clients on site access.

Scotty Wilkins, after several years as Workshop Manager, takes on a new role as Outside Sales Lead. Scotty will be out meeting clients face-to-face across North America, drawing on his field experience to talk heater decoking and inspection, combined services and pipeline integrity.

Growing a business means growing its people. Congratulations to all three and thank you for everything you bring to Cokebusters USA!

07/10/2026

Can pigs get stuck?

The short answer is yes. Any honest contractor will tell you the same.

It usually comes down to something unexpected in the line: unknown schedule changes in the piping, excessive fouling, a residual temperature sensor or other debris. That's why the real work starts long before a pig goes anywhere near site.

Every job begins with a detailed review of the P&IDs and, where possible, a site survey, to understand exactly what the tool will meet along the way.

The tools themselves are designed with this in mind. Our patented mechanical pigs are flexible enough to navigate the system, but hard enough to do their job and we can modify the design to suit unusual layouts. Our inspection pigs are single bodied, which makes navigating tight geometry far easier.

And if a pig does stick, our skilled operators have a set of defined routines to recover it, with further interventions available in the unlikely event that those solutions don't work.

Success doesn't come from forcing a tool through, it's all in the preparation.

What's the most unexpected thing you've found inside a line? 👇

02/10/2026

The windows are in! 🪟

Progress on our new Americas Operations Centre in Houston continues to move fast. The building is really starting to take shape now and it's looking better with every passing week 🏗️

Our Cokebusters USA team in Texas is still on track to move in before the end of the year, with an official opening planned for January 2027.

This building has been on our company vision board since we first opened the doors at Cokebusters USA Inc. way back in 2012.

They say good things come to those who wait and this new home was definitely worth waiting for!

30/09/2026

Almost 3 decades of technology evolution in one image.

From early prototypes our founders were working on way back in 1997 to the compact, titanium-bodied Mark VI in service today, our Smart Pig technology has been continuously refined generation after generation.

Every generation of smart pig has introduced new materials, new electronics and new detection logic, always driven by the same question: how do we inspect the assets that other tools can't reach?

Every generation has pushed the boundary of what's considered "unpiggable" a little further, bringing previously inaccessible tubes, pipes and pipelines into proper integrity programmes.

And this innovation is never finished.

The next generation is in the final stages of development... watch this space 👀

28/09/2026

A huge thank you to XRG Technologies for hosting the 'Fired Heater Fouling Seminar' in Rotterdam last week!

Our MD James Phipps had the pleasure of presenting technical insights from the field, covering decoking and mechanical cleaning, inline inspection of fired heater tubes and how combining the two in a single service gives operators a fuller picture of their assets.

He also took the opportunity to look back at how far this specialist field has come. Our people have been pioneering in this niche since its origin in the late nineties and that long experience continues to shape how we approach every job today.

Events like this bring together the people who deal with fouling every day and the result is conversations that move the industry and its technology forward. As always we're pleased to have been part of the conversation.

Thank you again to the XRG team for a well organised and informative event!

16/09/2026

In 2025 we deployed our UT AXIS tool on a 1,853m subterranean multiphase pipeline in Europe, where it navigated heavy schedule bends, unbarred tee-pieces, both above and below ground.

Our client then ran a verification exercise, comparing our reported defects and locations against anomalies identified during previous inspections carried out by a different provider using traditional multi-bodied tools.

Guess what they found?

We've put together a free case study covering the full project: the pipeline, the deployment, the data and exactly how that verification exercise played out.

If you're weighing up whether compact axial positioning technology can be trusted against conventional methods, this is worth five minutes of your time.

📥 Download the case study: https://cokebusters.kit.com/axial-positioning-proves-inspection-data

14/09/2026

CB1 is on the move again.

This time it's heading to Greece, for a combined mechanical cleaning and inline inspection job at a refinery... marking the beginning of what's set to be a busy few months for our fleet!

Autumn and Spring are traditionally shutdown seasons across much of the refining industry, when planned maintenance windows open up and assets get the attention they need. For us, that means our specialist Double Pumping Units rarely stay home for long.

If you've been following this page for a while, CB1 might look familiar. We shared a photo of it at the foot of Mont Blanc earlier this year, en route home from a job in North Africa. Since then it's been serviced, restocked and prepared to go back to work.

Whilst we don't use it much any more, the old Cokebusters tagline of 'Around the Clock. Around the World" still applies.

At this time of year one job finishes and another begins, wherever in the world that happens to be.

10/09/2026

Understanding where an industry is heading takes more than watching from the sidelines. It means being in the room.

Our MD James Phipps recently attended the EIC (Energy Industries Council) Energy Exports Conference in Aberdeen and came away with some genuinely useful reflections on where the sector currently stands.

We've written up our key takeaways on sovereignty, decarbonisation, AI and all the ways the global picture is shifting in ways that don't make the headlines.

Read our full reflections below👇

https://cokebusters.com/news/energy-sovereignty-ai-industry-engagement/

08/09/2026

We're so looking forward to attending this XRG Technologies, LLC event in Rotterdam on the 24th of September!

Tackling fired heater fouling has been at the heart of what we do at Cokebusters for over 21 years, so this is exactly our territory.

The seminar will cover fouling types, the impact on efficiency, reliability and emissions, mitigation strategies and decoking, alongside real-world case studies and lessons learned from across the industry.

Our MD James Phipps will be presenting technical insights from the field, drawing on two decades of hands-on experience solving exactly these challenges for clients worldwide.

If you're attending, we'd love to connect. Will we see you there?

📍 Rotterdam Marriott Hotel, 24th September

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