A new natural gas discovery was made earlier this week by oil giant BP.
As The Denver Post reports, the company made the discovery in the Mancos formation of the San Juan Basin near the Colorado border – saying a new well it drilled averaged production of 12.9 million cubic feet of gas per day in its first month - the highest achieved by a well in that area in 14 years.
The discovery comes just a few months after drilling activity in the San Juan Basin, which covers southwest Colorado and northwest New Mexico, came to a halt after producers struggled with depressed prices and competition from cheaper-to-exploit fields in Pennsylvania and Ohio.
According to Bloomberg, the well could bring gas explorers one step closer to unlocking a shale play that, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, is home to one of the nation’s largest reserves of the fuel, a play that the Denver Post reports had 40 times the petroleum reserves than first estimated.