North Carolina’s moratorium on hydraulic fracturing ended in March, but geologists and other government officials still are uncertain as to how much shale gas resides in Lee and other counties throughout the state.

That’s where Russ Patterson and Patterson Exploration Services come in. Patterson and his crew spent about a week in late May and early June drilling three test holes throughout Lee County to obtain rock samples to send to N.C. Department of Environment and Natural

Resources so it could determine the practicality of fracking in the area.

“We went out and drilled exploration holes just to see what’s down there,” Patterson said.

Patterson couldn’t discuss the results of the exploration, and State Geologist Ken Taylor said DENR’s findings tentatively would be released later this summer.

“We’re still looking at the rocks,” Taylor said. “We’re looking at 12 boxes of cores plus the samples we took in bags and buckets.”

Patterson has been in the mineral exploration business for more than 41 years and has traveled across North America and the Caribbean as part of his work.

“It keeps you young,” he said of discovering the hidden treasures his rigs often find in the rock. “I like finding things, proving them out. It’s a kind of science, and it’s addictive.”

And now that the Lee County operation is concluded, Patterson and his team are scheduled to begin drilling in Stokes County Friday.

“It’s not that big of a drill,” Patterson said of the rig they would use in Walnut Cove, the area they would be drilling. “We’ll set it up like you set up to drill a water well. We’ll drill down until it gets hard at about 20 or 30 feet. Then we’ll go to coring. We’ll probably cut 100 to 400 feet [of rock] per day depending on how the rock cores, and we’ll do that until we get to the bottom.”

The holes in Lee County ranged from 200 to about 330 feet deep, and Patterson said the Stokes hole would likely be somewhere around 2,000 feet deep.

“We don’t generally drill holes that deep,” he said. “But nobody has any data on what we’re going after. Even though they’ve got shallower holes in [the area], they don’t have any deep enough to give them the information they need. This will provide the state with core they can test to determine the potential of there being gas there.”

And while gas exploration is just a small part of what Patterson does, he explained the necessity of finding natural resources where they are.

“It if can’t be grown, it has to be mined,” he said. “You have to get it where it is, not where you want it to be. Natural resources, as far as what comes out of the ground, most of the time it is never where you want it to be. It’s just where it is. If it wasn’t for [oil and gas exploration], you wouldn’t have anything to go in your automobile.”

But Patterson is adamant that he’s not an oil and gas man. He’s a rock man. And whether he’s looking for resources to help rebuild roads in Haiti or exploring the presence of shale gas in Lee County, he’s happiest when on the job.

“You get to travel the world,” he said. “You get to go places you never dreamed even existed and look for rocks. And you get paid for it. It really doesn’t get much better.”