Well, it looks like Vermont has dodged an environmental bullet… because it’s been fired in another direction. TransCanada has announced plans for a massive new pipeline to carry Albertan tar sands oil to Saint John, New Brunswick.

The energy company (which also, thanks to Jim Douglas, owns the hydroelectric dams on the Connecticut River) is seeking a new route, given political uncertainty over the Keystone XL project in the central United States and a proposed pipeline to the British Columbian coast.  And its possible use of an existing pipeline between Portland and Montreal, which has raised some environmental hackles in New England.

The $12 billion Energy East Pipeline would have a capacity of 1.1 million barrels per day. Some of that tar-sands crude would be processed at refineries in eastern Canada; the rest would be exported from a new deepwater oil terminal on the Atlantic. And there seems to be a lot of pent-up demand:

Customers have already pledged to use at least 900,000 bpd of the line’s capacity, suggesting that producers and refiners will pay for an export route, while regulatory hurdles delay pipelines in Western Canada and to the United States.

“It looks like they got far more interest than they were initially expecting,” said analyst Sandy Fielden of consulting firm RBN Energy in Austin, Texas.

Yeah, well, if there’s oil to be had, the market will find a way to get it. But at least it won’t flow through Vermont, right? We don’t seem all that concerned about the environmental damage that Hydro Quebec causes north of the border as we calmly consume HQ power — and even think of it as “clean energy.” So I expect we’ll breathe a sigh of relief about the Portland-Maine pipeline, and not give much thought to Energy East. Out of sight, out of mind.  

The TransCanada project will take several years to build, and must clear a variety of regulatory hurdles. And Canadian environmental groups are promising a fight. But as long as (longtime Albertan and former oil company employee) Stephen Harper rules the roost, TransCanada is likely to find receptive ears — at least at the federal level.

And unlike western Canada, where environmental concerns often trump economic arguments, the Atlantic provinces have had weak economies for a long time. So although the idea of a deepwater port for tar sands oil in the unique ecosystem of the Bay of Fundy gives me the fantods, eastern Canadians are unlikely to look askance at a huge and lucrative development project.

In any case, the oil’s gotta flow. Even now, in the absence of pipelines to the sea, huge quantities of tar sands oil are moving by rail. A distant relative works for a railroad in the Pacific Northwest, and he’s said that they can’t keep the trains moving fast enough to carry all that oil to port. Which, after the recent disaster in Lac Megantic, should give us all the fantods.  

My point, and I do have one, is that as long as there’s demand for oil, they’re going to produce it in Alberta and find a way to ship it out. Which is why I’m such a strong advocate for real renewables. We can fight Keystone, and Canadians can try to fight the other potential routes, but the only real way to stop this crazy business is to establish renewable energy — solar, wind, hydro, biomass, whatever — as a viable and substantial source of power.