With the Obama administration obstructing the Keystone pipeline for the last few years and no real resolution in sight, Canada is considering alternatives for transporting its valuable oil sands. First, some suggested a relatively short pipeline to the Pacific, from which Canada could market its crude to oil-thirsty Asia. Then came another idea: “Instead, go east, all the way to the Atlantic,” reports Bloomberg. “Thus was born Energy East, an improbable pipeline that its backers say 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 oil. 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.” Memo to Obama: Put that in your pipe and smoke it. More…