If you want to find someone who thinks outside the box, look for that person among those who live outside the box.

This is why newspaper publisher David Black, 66, may be the right person to end the heated pipeline dispute between British Columbia and Alberta.

Black, a self-made millionaire, is chairman and majority owner of Victoria-based Black Press Ltd., which owns 150 newspapers throughout Canada and the U.S. He’s never worked in the oil sector, but he has a civil engineering degree and an MBA.

Black’s proposal is designed to end the war between B.C. and Alberta over whether or not to build Montreal-based Enbridge Pipelines Inc.’s proposed Northern Gateway Pipeline between northern Alberta’s oilsands and the tidewaters at Kitimat, B.C.

The original idea was to construct the $5.5-billion pipeline so that raw bitumen could be transported to Kitimat for export via tankers to lucrative Asian markets. The pipeline would free Alberta producers from the almost exclusive export market in the U.S., which pays much lower prices than Asian markets are willing pay.

Opposition by B.C. groups concerned about the environment seems strong enough to run the plan off the rails. The strongest objection springs from the risks of shipping heavy oil via huge tankers that must negotiate narrow, current-plagued coastal inlets before the open Pacific.

Black proposes building a $13-billion oil refinery at Kitimat, and his plan addresses a number of the Enbridge pipeline issues – although certainly not all of them.

From the B.C. government’s point of view, a modern, full-sized refinery would give the province a substantial economic payback for the environmental risks it would still undertake on the land.

This has been Premier Christie Clark’s primary point in talks with Alberta: in her view, B.C. needs more of a payback on risk before it endorses the project. Thus far, Alberta has declined to share its royalties, but economic spinoffs from a B.C. refinery could accomplish much the same thing.

Insert a refinery into the equation and, although the pipeline risks don’t change, shipping lighter, refined product such as gasoline or diesel fuel via tankers poses a much lower marine risk because the spilled product evaporates – unlike heavy oil.

When Black first proposed his solution in August, the Alberta oil sector quickly shot it down. Since then, the tenacious publisher has responded with facts.

For example, some critics claim Asia wants only crude oil, not refined products. In early November, Black travelled to Beijing and Tokyo and met with 12 companies to test the waters on selling them refined oil products. “There’s serious interest,” he said upon his return, “and they’ve asked for more information – all of them.”

Black, who will now finance an environmental study on his proposal, says a Kitimat refinery places tankers several days closer to Asia than other west coast ports, and there’s also access to abundant natural gas to power a new refinery.

Finally, new studies predict that the U.S. will become self-sufficient in oil by about 2030, thanks to new shale technology. So, Canada must find new export markets, such as Asia. Black’s out-of-the-box refinery idea definitely warrants more attention.

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