Nothing is what it seems in B.C. these days. Or so suggests the Fraser Institute, which is arguing that Green Party MLA Andrew Weaver's support for an oil refinery on the north coast is in fact a ploy to delay any oil development at all.

A "red herring" is how Fraser Institute senior director Kenneth Green described Weaver's recent contention that such a refinery could make heavy oil pipelines through B.C., and tankers off its coast, more environmentally acceptable.

"Weaver's new 'willingness' to make pipeline acceptance contingent on the construction of a $25 billion refinery that's likely to take a decade to complete is not a sign of reasonable compromise," Green wrote in a recent op-ed.

"It's not a sell-out to big oil," he went on. "It's not even an accommodation with the reality of oil movement by rail. It is simply another potential obstacle to developing Alberta's oil sands, and a stalling tactic to keep bitumen in the ground."

Weaver has insisted that the refinery proposed by media baron David Black offers a potential compromise to the years-long controversy over Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline, and a separate pipeline proposal by Kinder Morgan.

"[Black] wants to protect this coast and, in my view, it is his opposition to the sheer recklessness of proposing to load super tankers with impossible-to-clean-up dilbit that has caused him to search for alternatives," Weaver contends.

Further delays to oil pipelines in B.C. may ultimately benefit Premier Christy Clark's ambitions for natural gas the most. So suggested a profile of her in Alberta Oil magazine written by former Canada West Foundation president Roger Gibbins.

Environmentalists in the province, he wrote, "are simultaneously engaged on many fronts and, in the short term, the intense political debate over proposed oil pipelines provides a useful distraction and political cover for the embryonic LNG industry."

"To date, the premier has escaped a full-on attack from environmentalists, but there is no question that the environmental community will eventually train its big guns on the LNG vision," Gibbins went on. "In this sense, a speedy resolution of the pipeline debate may not be attractive to Premier Clark."

Geoff Dembicki reports on energy and sustainability for The Tyee.