UNSPSC 71121700: Oilfield fishing services

Services including labor to retrieve lost, damaged or faulty equipment or tubulars from a well bore during the drilling or the workover of a well and including sidetracking and section milling services.

UNSPSC 71121700 Oilfield fishing services is a Class code, but the recent state and local contract opportunities tagged under this code show no activity in oilfield fishing whatsoever. The work actually being solicited—well abandonment, plugging, drilling, and rehabilitation across water, irrigation, and orphan oil and gas sites—is fundamentally misaligned with the code's nominal scope. Water well construction, maintenance, and repair dominate the recent record: municipalities and counties are procuring irrigation system improvements, municipal water supply well drilling and rehabilitation, on-call well and pump maintenance contracts, and stock water installation. State environmental agencies (Michigan's EGLE, Mississippi's Oil and Gas Board) are managing orphan oil and gas well plugging under federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funding, which involves plugging and site restoration rather than fishing operations. The code appears to be a classification error in the state and local procurement systems rather than a genuine category for well-related services.

Issuing bodies span state environmental departments (Michigan EGLE, Mississippi Oil and Gas Board), municipalities (Lubbock, Pascagoula, Ocala, Reynolds, Wrens, Albany, Bend, Austin), counties (Hillsborough, Seminole, Gwinnett, Sarasota, Escambia, Boulder), state parks agencies (Oregon Parks and Recreation, Texas Parks and Wildlife), school districts, and water and sanitation districts. Recent high-volume activity clusters around orphan well plugging in Michigan (11 separate direct solicitations across Gratiot, Montcalm, and Kent counties in July 2026) and Mississippi (two separate IFBs in August and October 2026 covering 19 total wells), with smaller numbers of municipal water well construction and maintenance RFQs, RFPs, and ITBs scattered across the Southeast, Southwest, and Pacific Northwest. Representative opportunities include the Mississippi Oil and Gas Board's request for plugging, remediation, and reclamation of nine orphaned wells in Jasper and Jones Counties under IFB 3160008162 (bids due December 18, 2026; prequalified bidders only; Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act funding); the City of Reynolds, Georgia's bid for a new 500 GPM deep well and chemical feed building under IFB due August 14, 2026; Hillsborough County's invitation to bid for water well maintenance and repair services at 67 county wells (ITB due June 12, 2026, estimated $688,073 for two years); and Michigan EGLE's prequalification RFP for oil and gas well plugging, drilling, and site restoration services statewide (proposals due September 22, 2026; five-year contract term; multiple awardees anticipated at $800,000 total).