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Reece Gardner: A frank approval of fracking is needed

Would you like for North Carolina to take action that would capitalize on the “natural gas boom” by lifting the moratorium on drilling for natural gas in our state and to go after the estimated 42 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in North Carolina?

A move is underway to do just that, with the passage recently by a landslide vote in favor of Senate Bill 76. If this bill becomes law — and it is certainly expected to do so — our state could start issuing “fracking” permits to drilling companies in less than two years.

The Department of Environmental and Natural Resources will probably finalize rules and regulations for this practice as early as October of next year.

This involves drilling a well thousands of feet beneath the earth’s surface and blasting a mixture of water, sand and chemicals into the well to create fractures in shale rock formations to release the natural gas trapped inside. It seems incredible that we have taken this long to act on this technology, since it has been available to us since 1998, making the extraction of shale gas economical.

Just by pointing to the success stories in Texas and North Dakota, it is clear that we have the opportunity to turn our economy’s around. As Sen. Buck Newton pointed out in an article written by Carolina Journal’s Sara Burrows, we have an opportunity to turn our state’s economy around by releasing the vast amounts of gas believed trapped below North Carolina’s soil. By setting severance taxes on this gas lower than any other state, we could attract industry and put thousands of people back to work.

Just look at some examples: An article in the Houston Chronicle reveals how once-impoverished Karnes County had been turned into a gold mine with landowners there pulling in $70 million in royalties in November alone. Largely due to this effort in North Dakota, that state’s unemployment rate has dropped to 2.6 percent, and there may soon be no sales tax there.

Of course on the Democratic side of the aisle, we have some naysayers such as Sen. Woodard of Durham, who said, “As people move into North Dakota to accept those jobs, they’re bringing families with them, and a lot of them are living in trailers and crowding the school system. We are tired of trailers for our schoolchildren.”

And Sen. Nesbitt, who said, “If we pollute the aquifiers, we’ll have a desert in four or five counties in this state.”

Sen. McKissick said, “We don’t want wells becoming long-term storage facilities for our wastewater,” to which GOP Sen. Newton responded, “The safest way to dispose of this wastewater is to put it back down deep in the earth, and there are more than 170,000 such wells in the U.S. already with no problems.

Sen. Kinnaird said, “This state would do better to support ‘cleaner’ sources of energy, like solar, and by being more energy-efficient we can reduce North Carolina’s energy usage by 40 percent.”

If these comments look familiar, they should, because it is this attitude that has kept us from going after this natural gas that has been available to us since 1998.

As GOP bill sponsor Sen. Brock said, “Drillers have a lot at stake if fracking proved uneconomical or unsafe. SB 76 requires them to post three types of bonds before drilling in our state — one ensuring they have sufficient funds to complete a project and not abandon it midway; one providing cleanup funds to the state in case of an accident; and one compensating the landowner in case drilling damages his property.

Folks, the time for talking about this effort has passed. It is now time to act!

 

Reece Gardner is the host of “The Reece Gardner Hour,” which airs on TACC-9 on Mondays at 9 p.m., Tuesdays at 8 p.m., Thursdays at 11 p.m., Sundays at 10:30 p.m.and on-demand anytime at TACC9.com. You can reach Reece at rbgej@aol.com.


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