The meeting comes about a month after the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources paid drillers about $91,500 to dig a core hole 1,750 feet deep on property owned by Walnut Cove in the Walnut Tree community.

This week, State Geologist Ken Taylor said during the meeting that the samples include 323 feet of organic-rich material, according to Brooks Rainey Pearson, an associate attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center.

The samples must still be analyzed — though DENR does not have money for the analysis, according to DENR officials.

Jeff Reid, a senior geologist, said during the meeting that there were good signs that the samples contain shale gas because the rock bubbled after being covered by soapy water, according to Rainey Pearson.

Those bubbles do not clearly confirm the presence of shale gas, Rainey Pearson said Friday.

Skvarla, citing the samples, said public money should be spent for more shale-gas exploration, possibly through a public-private consortium.

Positive indications from the samples have budget implications, according to David Rhoades, a commerce department spokesman. Gov. Pat McCrory’s proposed budget and the Senate’s proposed budget contain $500,000 to explore North Carolina's natural gas potential, he said, but the House budget does not. Budget negotiations could take a few more weeks.

Spending public money on shale-gas exploration is not a new idea.

Opponents have consistently said that it would make state taxpayers subsidize something that energy-sector companies should pay for. Supporters have said that North Carolina may be more attractive to energy sector companies if it were a stakeholder.

At one point of the meeting, Skvarla said that the governor’s office needs to know about the Walnut Cove samples right away, Rhoades confirmed.

“As commerce secretary, Secretary Skvarla is enthusiastic about pursuing all opportunities to bring industries and jobs to North Carolina, including the energy industry,” Rhoades said.

“Just as he was excited at the state getting into the wind energy business at the groundbreaking of the Amazon US East Wind Farm in Elizabeth City on Tuesday, we are promoting an all-of-the-above energy policy to diversify the state's energy resources,” he said.

Even if the samples turn out to contain shale gas, it is unclear whether 323 feet of 1,750 constitute an amount that would attract energy-sector companies, Rainey Pearson said.

For Mary Kerley, a Stokes County resident who opposes hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, the comments made by the state geologists raise many questions. If there is confirmation that shale gas is present, Kerley said she wonders whether it would be enough to make companies move to the area to frack it out of the ground.

In addition to the Walnut Cove site, DENR selected three other sites to collect samples in the Cumberland-Marlboro basin.

In May, Patterson Exploration Services also drilled core holes at an N.C. Department of Transportation maintenance yard in Raeford, an N.C. Wildlife Commission fish hatchery in Fayetteville and an N.C. Highway Patrol site in Laurinburg.

Those samples did not indicate the presence of shale, according to the state geologists.

The price tag for the four core-hole projects, including the one on Walnut Cove property, was about $236,000.

bgutierrez@wsjournal.com

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