Heavy oil and oilsands industry watchers often talk about how this sector’s story is not millennial, and that innovators and builders were advancing it forward well before the early 2000s, when those outside their circles took notice. Many of the architects of the industry have also always known that in order for it, and by extension Canada’s place on the energy stage, to reach its full potential, its tentacles would need to stretch far beyond the borders of North America.

Observers have long accepted that, in order to continue expansion in an economically sustainable fashion, Canada’s heavy oil and oilsands producers would have to expand their markets beyond the U.S. Midwest. Perhaps what they didn’t realize was that time was not on their side. In hindsight, new infrastructure projects needed to be launched sooner in order to manage the combined and somewhat surprising forces of booming tight oil production in the United States and effective development opposition—the not-entirely unforeseen “bitumen bubble” whirlwind of 2012 and early 2013 that reeled corporate and government coffers.

The discounts Canadian crudes have been receiving due to constrained market access have been painful, but certainly not the “crushing blow” to the heavy oil and oilsands industry that some media outlets have asserted. As TD Economics pointed out in a March 2013 research note, “Canadian crude price conditions have improved so far in 2013 and recent data on investment intentions show that the crude industry is not pulling in its horns.”

That’s because there is momentum in the development of these resource assets. The infrastructure projects are happening to rebalance supply and demand, even just within North America, in the near term. But the future, of course, lies overseas. Not just in market access, but in financing, continuing the industry’s long history of being backed by international players.

For years we have known that Canada’s heavy oil and oilsands sector would need to better engage the globe in order to truly flourish—the size of the resource is just too big for one country, and possibly even two, to produce and consume. And now it’s happening. Another set of transitions for a sector in constant flux.