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Back in January, I wrote about hydraulic fracturing and the potential for this method of natural gas drilling in North Carolina. At the time, lawmakers sounded cautious about the potential.

For those who haven’t followed the issue: the fracking debate has to do with the potential to extract energy and profit balanced against some pretty severe environmental consequences, some but not all of them related to water contamination.

For those who have followed the issue, this notice is on the House calendar today:

There will be a meeting after session on Tuesday, April 12, 2011, in Room 544 LOB on Natural Gas “Fracking” 101. The process of “fracturing” or “fracking” to develop natural gas reserves is attracting considerable interest among energy companies, states and environmental organizations, including those in North Carolina. In this presentation, Dr. Vik Rao, Executive Director of the Research Triangle Energy Consortium housed at RTI in the Research Triangle Park and former Chief Technical Officer at Halliburton, provides an overview of the fracturing process — how it works and its economic and environmental challenges. Dr. Rao will be joined by former Secretary of the NC Department of Natural Resources Secretary Bill Holman - now at the Duke University Institute for the Environment — who will provide an overview of how other states are managing the policy questions concerning fracturing.

“After session” isn’t exactly a time-certain for this meeting. The honorables are set to meet at 2 p.m. in the historic state capitol building. Figure the fracking meeting will start sometime between 3:30 p.m. and 4:30 p.m. if nothing goes awry. You can tune into audio here (click on "Finance Committee Room").

House Speaker Thom Tillis and Senate President Pro Tempore were asked about fracking this morning.

Tillis: “I don’t have a lot of technical knowledge on the bill. What I will tell you is that I think one of the ways we provide a better economic base for North Carolina in the future is one — try and figure out how we can potentially, responsibly extract energy from the ground and use it. It grows jobs; it provides us with more energy independence.

“The question of whether we could pass a bill over what is now literally now the next 45, 50 days of the session — I don’t know. But I do think it’s something we will study and focus on and potentially in this term take a decision on it.”

Berger: “One of the things we think can potentially be done to really jump start a whole new sector in North Carolina’s economy is to do some things in the field of energy. There are a number of options out there. Fracking is one of them; off-shore exploration is another. I think you’ll see us looking at a full menu of options to try to create a new jobs sector in North Carolina.”