The Front Range peaks rise approximately 22,000 ft (6600 m) from the floor of the basin under Denver. The deep part of the basin near Denver became filled with Paleogene sandstone and conglomerate, a layer now called the Denver Formation. In the regions to the north and south of Denver, however, stream erosion removed the Paleogene layers, revealing the underlying Cretaceous Pierre Shale. Natural resources Petroleum The basin itself forms a petroleum province. Oil and gas have been produced from the Denver Basin since the discovery in 1901 of oil in fractured Pierre Shale at the McKenzie Well, part of the Boulder oil field in Boulder County. The great majority of Denver Basin oil and gas fields produce from Cretaceous sandstones, although the Permian Lyons Sandstone is also a producer. Oil has also been produced from Permian sandstones and dolomites and Pennsylvanian limestones in the Nebraska part of the basin. The Wattenberg Gas Field, one of the largest natural gas deposits in the United States, is a basin-centered gas field just north of the Denver metropolitan area. The field has produced more than 4.0 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of natural gas from the J Sandstone, Codell Sandstone, Niobrara Formation, and the Hygiene Sandstone, and Terry Sandstone members of the Pierre Shale, (all Cretaceous). In 2007, the field made 11 million barrels of oil and 170 billion cubic feet (BCF) of gas from more than 14,000 wells, making it the 9th largest source of natural gas in the United States. Biogenic natural gas is recovered from shallow gas fields (less than 3,000 feet) of the Niobrara Formation in Yuma, Phillips, and Washington counties of northeastern Colorado and Cheyenne and Sherman counties of northwestern Kansas. To date, 2,900 wells have produced of gas. Drilling is currently very active, and the play is expanding into Perkins, Chase, and Dundy counties, Nebraska. Coal Bituminous coal has been mined by underground methods in the Denver Basin, at Superior and Louisville, Colorado and other locations along the western edge of the basin. The coal comes from the Cretaceous Laramie Formation. Mining began in the late 1850s and stopped in 1979. Large lignite deposits are present in the Paleocene Denver Formation in the central part of the basin, in a north-south belt east of Denver and Colorado Springs, in Adams, Arapahoe, Elbert, and El Paso counties. Some mining was done from about 1886 to 1940, but was