A BILL TO BE ENTITLED
AN ACT to protect property rights of north carolina citizens from forced Pooling arrangements associated with hydraulic fracturing activities associated with fossil fuel exploration and extraction activities.
The General Assembly of North Carolina enacts:
SECTION 1.  G.S. 113‑393 reads as rewritten:
"§ 113‑393.  Development of lands as drilling unit by agreement or order of Commission.

(b)	When Each Owner May Drill. – Should the owners of separate tracts embraced within a drilling unit fail to agree upon the integration of the tracts and the drilling of a well on the unit, and should it be established that the Commission is without authority to require integration as provided for in subsection (a) of this section, then, subject to all other applicable provisions of this law, the owner of each tract embraced within the drilling unit may drill on his tract, but the allowable production from each tract shall be such proportion of the allowable for the full drilling unit as the area of such separately owned tract bears to the full drilling unit.
(c)	Cooperative Development Not in Restraint of Trade. – Agreements made in the interests of conservation of oil or gas, or both, or for the prevention of waste, between and among owners or operators, or both, owning separate holdings in the same oil or gas pool, or in any area that appears from geological or other data to be underlaid by a common accumulation of oil or gas, or both, or between and among such owners or operators, or both, and royalty owners therein, of a pool or area, or any part thereof, as a unit for establishing and carrying out a plan for the cooperative development and operation thereof, when such agreements are approved by the Commission, are hereby authorized and shall not be held or construed to violate any of the statutes of this State relating to trusts, monopolies, or contracts and combinations in restraining of trade.
(d)	Variation from Vertical. – Whenever the Department fixes the location of any well or wells on the surface, the point at which the maximum penetration of such wells into the producing formation is reached shall not unreasonably vary from the vertical drawn from the center of the hole at the surface, provided, that the Commission shall prescribe rules and the Department shall prescribe orders governing the reasonableness of such variation. This subsection shall not apply to wells drilled for the purpose of exploration or development of natural gas through use of horizontal drilling in conjunction with hydraulic fracturing treatments."
SECTION 2.  Section 25 of S.L. 2014‑4 is repealed.
SECTION 3.  This act is effective when it becomes law.