Two teams search for natural gas in the frozen ground of northern Canada and an enormous snowstorm engulfs one of the crews.
The Nabors crew encounter difficulties when their drilling goes nowhere and a huge storm engulfs the MGM crew and stops their work cold.
A spell of unexpected warm weather hits the MGM camp just as they are about to undertake the moving of the drill to a second site. The Nabors rig is finally drilling steadily but runs into a tough patch far underground.
A crew arrives to test the first MGM well site for the commercial viability of the gas there. Nabors rushes to finish drilling its first well more than a month behind schedule.
The Nabors crew are pressured to get the two wells they are working ready for final testing. The MGM crew runs into equipment problems as it looks to get its final well up and running.
Nabors looks to assess their investment with the aid of an intricate engineering procedure. MGM looks to complete its third well before the spring thaw forces them to shut operations down.
Thin ice at an important crossing threatens to delay the start of MGM's drilling. In Alberta, a veteran driller looks to get four wells started but a rookie roughneck might impede his progress.
John Williams' equipment finally starts to move but ice roads and narrow bridges threaten to undermine the journey undertaken. At the Penn West site, Jesse returns to continue learning under Cody's watchful eye.
At Penn West, a tough rock formation causes problems for the drilling and Cody is helpless in dealing with it. At the MGM site, John Williams is itching to start drilling but a serious of unforeseen incidents threaten to delay him before beginning.
The experienced drill workers look to take charge at the sites as the new workers watch and try to keep them happy.
Tension mounts at the MGM site as John Williams approaches target depth. A small army of geologists arrive on site to answer the multi-million dollar question: is it boom time or bust? At Penn West in Alberta, Cody’s crew gets a shake-up when driller Kelly Pelsma takes on an entry-level job to earn extra cash.
With spring weather threatening to melt the rig site, a specialized team rushes to the Penn West site to crack open the underground rock so the crude oil can start flowing. But the big bosses still want to drill one last well, and Kelly and Cody push their crews hard to make it happen. Up north at the MGM site, John Williams and the truckers scramble to move the rig out before the ice roads disappear, but a sudden Arctic blizzard threatens to derail everything.
Cody and Logan encounter a driller's nightmare beneath the rig they are working on. Kelly has to break in a new rig and struggles with the task.
Near Eckville, AB, Kelly grapples with a brand new rig, a green crew and the unpredictable motorman Ryan “Hutch” Hutchinson, whose rig floor antics and safety violations put the entire crew at risk. On Rig 3, recently promoted derrickhand Mike Bencz can’t keep the rig’s mud flowing. Cody’s drilling is delayed, but when the coffee runs out, roughneck Travis Flexhaug finds out his days on the oil patch are numbered.
When equipment fails, the rig 6 crew gets off to a rough start and is forced to muscle the 313-kilogram pipes out of the well, old-school. On Rig 3, Kelly feels the heat of a surprise safety inspector. In Medicine Hat, AB, fledgling driller Colten Bosch leaves home for Rig 3, where a motley crew of rookies learns that stress trickles down and some bosses are impossible to please.
Fresh prairie air can’t revive the exhausted Rig 3 crew, so driller Cody has to think outside the doghouse box to get his boys back in the oil game, even if it means playing shrink to sad-faced motorhand Jesse Halikas. Rig 6 loses a driller and Kelly gets one week to train the poker-faced derrickhand Jeff Wilson. But when it comes to the driller’s exam, there’s no bluffing this bad boy, and Jeff is on his own.
Rig 6’s Jeff Wilson sizzles in the hot seat with a brand new Licence to Drill and Ely Ryan, his rapping roughneck. Ely’s reckless ways run him into a ditch, as Jeff struggles to stay cool with a top drive spinning out of control and three bosses breathing down his neck. Over at Rig 3, a monster truck stands by to drag the rig to its next well. Leaky mud tanks and a lazy welder hold Cody back, threatening to stop him from getting the job done in record time.
Logan and the boys soak up the sun and shovel snow as they wait for orders from Calgary. Will Rig 3 move to another well site, or head to the racks for spring break-up? Kelly and the crew at Rig 6 troubleshoot a failing mud pump and a renegade drill bit that veers off-course. If they finish this well fast, they could squeeze in one more, but Kelly and his bosses don’t see eye to eye on how to get the job done.
John Williams is back, this time overseeing 7 rigs and drilling 63 wells, investigating the cores of some of the world’s largest oil reserves. Over 400 kilometres south, Kelly and his crew are still hoping to work through spring break-up. Kelly puts in extra hours as a loader operator, and watches helplessly as the driller on duty struggles to ram pipe into a jagged well.
Kelly and the boys of Rig 6 are back in the oil patch, gunning for the first well of the summer season. But blue skies and sunshine can’t ease the rocky re-entry of a rusty rig and a flabby crew into the high-stakes world of drilling. Rig 3 is still on the racks, and Cody Wilson is going stir crazy, until a surprise promotion triggers a showdown with his old rival, Kelly. Cody confronts a steep learning curve, until a summer rig reunion softens the blow.
Cody and Kelly hit the big leagues, earning their spot on Justiss Oil rig 60. This Southern Belle is a vintage Canadian 1980s rig that’s a lot taller than any rig they’ve ever worked on before. She chews up the earth like Jello. And that’s just on the Day Shift. On Nights, Hutch makes his way up the derrick and takes on the fight of his life while Mike has his back.
Cody, Kelly, Mike and Hutch gambled big when they decided to go down to Jena, Louisiana and work the southern oil field during spring break. They all thought they’d make some extra dollars, but they didn’t think they’d make many friends. In this special episode, the riggers call time out, take a break – and have a sit down. Call it what you like, but whatever it is, there’s gonna be trash talkin'. And it's gonna get real personal.
