Flint Energy Services Ltd of Calgary has won a CAN 50 million construction contract from StatoilHydro Canada Ltd to work on the Leismer oilsands demonstration project near Fort MacMurray, Alberta. The contract involves construction of the central plant’s mechanical components for the new steam assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) project. The Leismer project is a SAGD operation near Conklin, Alberta, designed to extract bitumen from oilsands by injecting steam under ground to melt the thick tar-like oil and then pump it to the surface via a collecter pipeline. Last year, StatoilHydro acquired North American Oil Sands Corp. with more than 1100 sq/km of oilsands leases in northern Alberta. The contract with Flint is part of the first phase in a multi-year development plan which will see bitumen production increase from an initial 20,000bpd in 2012 to about 200,000bpd by 2020.