Licence to Drill Episode Rating Graph

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.

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.

At the Penn West site in Alberta, Logan makes the right call and the drill hits the payzone, but Cody has a tough time keeping the drill on target. Up north in MGM country, John Williams’ rig is finally drilling, and new hire Clint Buchinski is helping oversee the operation. But it’s an expensive learning curve - his first lesson costs John $40,000.

At the Penn West site, a tough formation is chewing up the drill bits and there’s nothing driller Cody Wilson and his crew can do about it. They turn to company man Logan Wild for a solution. Up north at the MGM site, John Williams is good to go, but everything conspires against him and keeps his drill bit from biting the dirt.

In MGM country, John Williams' equipment is finally moving, but treacherous icy roads and narrow bridges threaten the heavy loads. 1800 kilometres south, at the Penn West site, Jesse survived his first test and now he’s back for more, learning to “trip” under Cody’s watchful eye.

Just south of the Arctic Circle, a dangerously thin ice crossing prevents MGM’s John Williams from trucking in his rathole rig, and delays the start of the drilling. In Alberta, driller Cody Wilson has to drill four wells for Penn West Exploration this season, but rookie roughneck Jesse Halikas is slowing him down.

Two teams search for natural gas in the frozen ground of northern Canada and an enormous snowstorm engulfs one of the crews.

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.

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.