British Columbia newspaper magnate David Black is proposing a refinery at Kitimat to process the oilsands bitumen that would be shipped to the north coast from Alberta.

He has created a company, Kitimat Clean Ltd., that is making an environmental assessment application, but he isn’t saying if it has any financial backers.

Black estimates the refinery would cost $13-billion, and hopes it would be completed by 2020.

He says a refinery would remove the threat of offshore pollution from a spill of heavy crude, transportation of refined fuels is safer, and a refinery would provide much more work than a pipeline.