news-record.com

From today's paper:

RALEIGH — North Carolina could be sitting on significant deposits of natural gas, but lawmakers, regulators and environmentalists agree the state isn’t prepared to let anyone start drilling.

“Our laws on drilling and things like this have not been addressed since the early part of the 20th century,” said Rep. Mitch Gillespie, a Marion Republican who will serve as a point man for environmental issues during the next legislative session.

Gillespie said the thought of a new source of natural gas may be tantalizing at a time when the state is trying to move toward cleaner-burning, home-grown fuels. However, he cautioned, potential water-and air-contamination issues that come along with drilling should give everyone pause.

The General Assembly’s Environmental Review Commission, a group of lawmakers that helps oversee environmental policy, is due to hear about the state’s natural gas deposits and potential for exploration on Tuesday.

You can read the whole thing by clicking through to page B1 of the e-edition for Sunday. (For those coming to this link on 1/23 or later, that e-dition will have expired.) 

The website for the Environmental Review Commission is here, although as of Sunday they don't have their agenda or associated materials online yet. However, in the story I talk about some of the things they may be looking at:

State laws ban some practices involved in fracturing. For example, state water-quality rules limit what can be injected into the ground, said Robin Smith, an assistant secretary with the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Also, fracturing allows drillers to move horizontally underground from wells they drilled initially.

North Carolina laws prohibit drillers from moving more than 3 degrees off their original mark.

That law likely will remain in place, Gillespie said, while other updates are made.

For example, North Carolina would reap a royalty of only one-half of 1 percent on gas extraction operations, a drastically low figure by modern standards. Fees and permitting requirements would have to be updated.

And under current law, a driller would have to get liability insurance only up to $50,000, a laughably low figure given the amount of damage that mining operations can do if something goes wrong.

More links from folks mentioned in the story:

• The Dan River Basin Association (link). (h/t to Jeffrey Sykes for putting me in touch. I ran across Sykes' post (link) on the topic while looking for folks in Rockingham County to talk to on the topic.)
• Clean Water for North Carolina (link) is also concerned about the topic.
• The North Carolina Geological Survey (link) has been collecting data a lot of folks are interested in.

I had a couple questions I wasn't quite able to explore to my satisfaction. One, while I know there are companies buying up mineral rights leases in the Lee and Chatham area, I don't know if that sort of thing is happening in Rockingham County yet. Also, I wasn't able to talk to any of the companies doing the buying.

However, I did get some help identifying the players in this landscape. Jordan Treakle of the Rural Advancement Foundation International has been doing research on deeds in county courthouses. He found the following companies buying mineral rights leases:

• Tar Heel Natural Gas (link) is one of the companies looking for natural gas and buying up mineral leases.
• North Carolina Oil and Gas (link) is another company in the that Treakle identifies as buying leases. However, the company's website identifies itself as being involved in representing landowners rights in these transactions.
• WhitMar Exploration (link) is another company in the field and buying up leases.
• I don't have a link for Old North State Energy Company or Magnum Land Services, but they're also buying up leases.

Also, the state geological survey responded to a records request regarding who had asked for information regarding natural gas drilling in the state. They identified some of the same players as Treakle, but added:

• Next Energy, LLC (A nonprofit that looks like its interest in renewable energy.) 
• Duke University – Ronald D. Perkins
• Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University – Paul Olsen
• Piedmont Natural Gas, a utility provider that provides natural gas to homes in the Triad and elsewhere.

I don't get the impression that this is a one-year story. Lawmakers I spoke with, including Republicans, said it would likely be the 2013 legislative session before lawmakers were ready to let any sort of exploration go forward. Also related on this topic:

• A story from the Charlotte Observer in July.
• A story from the N&O in April.