CBC.  … You wouldn't think cheap oil would be a catalyst for moving forward with a $12-billion plan to build a pipeline across the country to pump the stuff, but that's exactly what TransCanada did this week.

The company officially applied to the National Energy Board to approve its Energy East pipeline this week, a 4,600-kilometre pipeline project that's going to pump Canadian oil from Alberta across six Canadian provinces to refineries on the East Coast to meet local demand and, more importantly, get exported to Europe, Africa and even parts of Asia.

Regardless of where oil prices stand now, TransCanada says there's going to be long-term demand to get the billions of barrels of oil sitting in Northern Alberta to market as quickly, safely, cheaply and efficiently as possible — and the best way to do that is by pipeline, it says.

The project faces the same regulatory, environmental and public opinion hurdles as TransCanada's other big-ticket pipeline, Keystone XL. But in Energy East's case, there's an added concern because it involves turning natural gas pipelines into oil ones. That's prompted fears of gas shortages in eastern Canada as a result.