This Oct. 17, 2010 photo shows an aerial photo of oil sprayed over 15 acres downwind of a runaway oil well owned by Denver-based SM Energy Company. The well 12 miles east of Cheyenne, Wyo., is among the first drilled in a rush to tap the Niobrara Shale underlying Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska. Domestic production of oil is rising for the first time in two decades thanks to new drilling techniques that are opening up vast fields of previously out-of-reach oil in the western United States. (AP Photo, file)
