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Major Vote Could Allow NC To Issue Fracking Permits In Spring 2015

The North Carolina Mining and Energy Commission will vote Friday, Nov. 14, on whether to pass more than 120 rules designed to govern natural gas drilling using hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.

Based on more than 217,000 comments submitted by the public, the final rules have been modified to meet the interests of North Carolinians, says Amy Pickle, who chairs the commission.

If the rules pass the commission on Friday, they go to the state Legislature for review. If lawmakers make no changes, the state could begin issuing drilling permits by spring 2015, Pickle says.

“If the Legislature did not have a disapproval bill and these rules were to go into effect without legislative changes, then I think March 2015, April 2015 is the earliest in which a permit could be issued for this industry,” says Pickle, who also serves as the director of Duke University’s State Policy Program at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

Pickle and the other commission members spent more than two years researching and developing the industry regulations.