Local politics, the county, and the world, as viewed by Tammy Maygra
Tammy's views are her own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bill Eagle, his pastor, Tammy's neighbors, Earl Fisher, Betsy Johnson, Joe Corsiglia, Rita Bernhard, her grand kids, Tony Hyde, Pat Robertson, Debi Corsiglia's dog, or Claudia Eagle's Cats. This Tammy's Take (with the exception of this disclaimer) is not paid for or written by, or reviewed by anyone but Tammy and she won't take crap off of anyone.

Tar sands is an environmental disaster and expensive way to create a barrel of oil, it takes 2-4 tons of tar sands and 2-4 barrels of water in the process. There is no drilling in the tar sand production, instead huge shovels scope the slimy greasy tar sand out of huge pits that can be hundreds of feet deep and then it is taken to the plant for processing. The product is mixed with water where a slurry is made and the bitumen floats to the top where it is captured for further processing, the rest of the material is a byproduct and useless for any other product, it is then piped to areas to be dumped back into the environment in the form of huge ponds where the water becomes stagnate and toxic to water fowl and other species.

After going through a process the bitumen is then sent through the pipeline to an oil refinery to continue on with more process to eventually end up as gasoline. The trouble with the product is that it is heavier crude than regular drilled oil and requires more processing just to be able to flow through the pipelines.

Because of the whole processing system required to develop tar sands from start to finish it actually emits more than 3 times the amount of carbon emissions that is generally used in the drilling and process of regular oil.
Oil companies are betting on tar sands because they are close to home, with the problems in the Middle east escalating and relations between the US and Middle eastern countries in doubt. Many companies figure the tar sands are the way to go. After all it sounds that oil from tar sands will cost more at the pump, and that means more than a hefty profit for the oil companies.

The amount of tar sand worldwide that is available to develop; equal three trillion barrels of oil. Although the vast amount of tar sand is deep within the earth and is out of reach of our technologies.

Instead of continuing to develop petroleum products the oil companies need to start developing products that will not add to our climate change, we know that the oil industry runs the world, and unfortunately they will continue to drill, extract oil from the earth so their pockets will always be full and the cash flowing no matter at what a cost to our planet.
The highly debated and controversial Key Stone pipeline would deliver over 830,000 barrels of crude daily to the refineries on the Gulf Coast. It would go through the Ogallala Aquifer which provides water to the plains region, an accident there would be disastrous, not only to the wildlife in the region but to humans as well, the Ogallala Aquifer is one of the largest aquifers in the world.

We can live without oil but we cannot survive without water. If an accident did occur, the oil companies would not really care because oil flowing, means dollars flowing, and oil companies care for dollars more than they care about any other thing.