Ellington

Come and listen to a story 'bout a man named Phil.

A poor governor barely kept his state fed.

Then one day, he was shinin' up his boots.

And up through the ground, he hoped, would come a bubblin' crude.

Oil, that is. Black gold. Texas tea.

Gov. Phil Bryant hopes there's oil in the hills of northwest Mississippi. At a meeting of the Southern States Energy Board July 27, Bryant and Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley announced the commission of a joint study of tar sands between the two states.

Citing the most recently available reports from the 1980s, the governors estimated the Hartselle Sandstone formation could contain as much 7.5 billion barrels of crude oil (the U.S. imports about 7 million barrels every week). Approximately 350 million of those barrels are located within 50 feet of the surface, according to the memorandum of understanding between the two states.

"For our nation to become more energy independent, we must recognize the importance of a forward-thinking approach to energy and continue to develop a comprehensive energy policy that works," said Bryant, who chairs the SSEB.

Whether developing tar sands represents forward-thinking economic policy remains a huge question mark, depending on whom one asks.

The Hartselle Sandstone, the bulk of which lies underneath northeast Alabama, is a light-colored, thick layer of sandstone and deep gray shale. The naturally occurring geological formation also contains a mix of sand, clay, water and viscous oil called bitumen. Bitumen is separated from the sandstone to produce crude oil that can be refined and turned into gasoline, motor oils and plastics.

The process is labor-intensive and hard on the environment, which has drawn criticism in Canada.

A 2012 study by Environment Canada, the Canadian counterpart to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, found that tar-sands production releases toxic hydrocarbons into the air and produces a sludge called tailings—a mix of water, sand, clay, silt and hydrocarbons.

In addition, oil-sands production displaces wildlife and leads to deforestation, even though Canadian mineral extraction companies promise to replant forests destroyed in the process.

Last week, Canadian oil regulators launched an investigation into a series of small, but confounding spills where oil is bubbling out of the ground in tar-sands development sites.

Closer to home, a March 2013 tar-sands pipeline spill of 1.1 million gallons near the town of Mayflower, Ark., resulted in two federal class-action lawsuits filed June 27 against ExxonMobil for the damage the spill caused.

Ken Nemeth, the SSEB's executive director, said the Hartselle Sandstone is the nation's third largest oil sands formation outside Utah and California.

During a summit last fall, Bryant announced a partnership with the Canadian government, which would include relying on Canadian expertise to develop Mississippi's energy resources.

"They've been doing this for a long time, the last 60 or plus years, and so it enables us to learn from their environmental best practices," Nemeth told Mississippi Public Broadcasting.

So far, Mississippi Development Authority has not published a timeline for completing the study.

Oil Sand Facts

• More than 2 trillion barrels of the world's oil is in the form of tar sands.

• In the U.S., tar sands are primarily concentrated in Eastern Utah, mostly on public lands (12 to 19 billion barrels).

• Producing one barrel of oil requires 2 tons of tar sands.

• Tar sands represent 40 percent of Canada's oil production, and approximately 20 percent of U.S. crude oil and products come from Canada.

• Trucks used in oil-sands productions can hold up to 320 tons of tar sands per load.

• Both mining and processing of tar sands have a variety of environmental impacts, such as global warming and greenhouse gas emissions, disturbance of mined land, impacts on wildlife, and air and water quality.

Source: U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management (BLM)