CALGARY – The National Energy Board is set to begin cross-Canada hearings today into the Energy East Pipeline.
The first hearings will be held in New Brunswick, where there has been fierce and sometimes violent protest in the past over oil and gas development.
A three-member panel is in Saint John this week, where the oil that would be sent through the proposed 45-hundred-kilometre project would be refined.
In all, 337 members of the public are scheduled to give their take on a pipeline that has sparked intense debate between those who believe the project is vital for economic growth and others who oppose it on environmental grounds.
In 2013 a protest in New Brunswick against shale gas exploration turned violent when some started throwing Molotov cocktails at police cars.
Hearings will be held in nine other cities, including Calgary in early November, and will wrap up in Kingston, Ontario in December.
The board must make a recommendation on the project to the federal government by March of 2018.
