Canada will have pipeline 50% bigger than Keystone XL running oilsand oil to the eastcoast by 2018

Energy East is an improbable pipeline that has a high probability of being built. It will cost C$12 billion ($10.7 billion) and could be up and running by 2018. Its 4,600-kilometer (2,858-mile) path, taking advantage of a vast length of existing and underused natural gas pipeline, would wend through six provinces and four time zones. It would be Keystone on steroids, more than twice as long and carrying a third more crude.

The natural gas pipeline is underused because of the shale gas boom in the United States.

Its end point, a refinery in Saint John, New Brunswick, operated by a reclusive Canadian billionaire family, would give Canada’s oil-sands crude supertanker access to the same Louisiana and Texas refineries Keystone was meant to supply.

Canada wants more than one pipeline out of the oilsands in Alberta. Having a major pipeline in the bag and large rail facilities provides leverage in other pipeline negotiations.

Read more »