Despite the criticisms and practically countless challenges associated with oilsands surface mining, it is a sector with a long future. That is the undeniable conclusion of a review of the state of the industry—for firms with the funds, know how, and kahunas that are involved, oilsands mining makes business sense, and there is plenty of business left to be done. There’s just not a lot of room for new players, and that could be why some investment houses are asserting that interested market players seek in situ projects for their new opportunities.

Alberta’s designated surface minable oilsands area recently got 40 per cent bigger. In last year’s annual report on reserves and the supply/demand situation of the province, the Alberta Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) redrew the boundaries of the surface minable area for the first time since the early 1980s. The area now totals 51.5 townships, or 4,801 square kilometres, raising questions about environmental impacts.

They dive, they dredge, they suction, they pump—and they do it so well that Edmonton-based Canadian Dewatering has grown from a tiny company specializing in industrial diving services with 45 employees and just a few million dollars per year in income to western Canada’s largest fluids management business, with $100 million in annual revenue and almost 400 employees.

Shell Canada’s Muskeg River mine and Scotford Upgrader are now officially back up and running after the second major turnaround for the Athabasca Oil Sands Project since opening in 2003. The maintenance outage, which had been in planning since 2007, started in March 2010 and took just over two months.

A new play for steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) is emerging in the southwestern region of the Athabasca oilsands deposit. The target is the Grand Rapids formation in an area where it has never been commercially tapped before, and the prize is an estimated 55 billion barrels of oil in place—tempting producers such as the SAGD gurus at Cenovus Energy. Cenovus recently announced plans for its Grand Rapids SAGD pilot, joining a number of other companies in their quest to free bitumen from what one of the juniors calls a “simple” reservoir in an area with established infrastructure.

Books about the oilsands were once few and far between; today they are part of a cottage industry, and often written by people with an axe to grind.