Tagged: Fracking

North Carolina has never been a player in natural gas production, but that could change thanks to a new extraction process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Fracking involves cracking shale rock to release natural gas so that it can be pumped out of the ground. This story is the first in a special “Fracking North Carolina” series. 

There’s a North Carolina sound that only a few dozen people have ever heard: gas escaping from a well in Lee County.

Standing in front of a well called Butler #3, you can see that it’s a shut-in well, which means it’s been capped with something called a “Christmas tree.” The Christmas tree is only about five feet tall; it’s painted green and it has three shut-off valves coming out of it. It’s set up this way so people can come back and attach pipes to it, but it has been shut off since the 1990s.

North Carolina companies are in the midst of a sustainable energy boom. Solar farms have bloomed, wind farms could be on their way, and local entrepreneurs are experimenting with biofuels and solar power. But cheap natural gas and new legislation could slow sustainable energy growth.

Experts are discussing these advancements at the North Carolina Department of Commerce's 10th Annual Sustainable Energy Conference in Raleigh today. Keynote speaker Marilyn Brown is a professor from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She said today on The State of Things that many people are looking to fracking for natural gas to solve our energy needs.

State regulators plan to measure air quality above deposits of natural gas. North Carolina lawmakers are moving to ease regulations on hydraulic fracturing. 

Leaders from across the country will speak tomorrow at a conference on the health effects of natural gas fracking. The Research Triangle Environmental Health Collaborative is a non-profit group that holds an annual conference every year on health issues. Martin Armes is the executive director of the collaborative. He said,  "We certainly recognize that we identify some hot button issues but we're going to try to conduct these meetings in a manner to be as productive as we can to make some recommendations. And we try to depoliticize the process as much as we can."