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To listen to experts today, you’d get the impression the Energy East pipeline project is pretty much buried — but not in the way proponents want the pipeline buried, if you know what I mean.

Two bank analysts, one from CIBC and another from Scotiabank, say the probability that the project to ship bitumen from Alberta to New Brunswick will go ahead is only about 25 per cent.

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Putting a number on such a complicated issue is a bit of a mug’s game but you get their point.

The future of the Energy East project, never a sunny thing, is looking increasingly dark.

On Friday, the National Energy Board announced all three panel members reviewing the project had stepped down pending the appointment of replacements. “Recused” was the official word but that’s just a polite way of saying that something approaching a scandal had forced them to resign from overseeing the public hearings into the project.

The roots of their sudden departure can be traced back to a particularly rabid form of protestby environmentalists in Montreal that forced the suspension of the hearings at the end of August.