VICTORIA -- The British Columbia government says natural gas resources in northeastern B.C., are trillions of cubic feet higher than first thought.

A report, published by the National Energy Board, focuses on the Liard Basin, a huge region of northeastern B.C., Yukon and Northwest Territories.

According to the report, 848 trillion cubic feet of natural gas lies under B.C.'s portion of the basin, up from the previous estimate of 210 trillion cubic feet.

A Ministry of Natural Gas Development release says that pushes the province's total natural gas potential above 3,400 trillion cubic feet.

That's enough to fuel all natural gas needs across the United States for more than a century, according to 2014 figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Ministry calculations show that extraction of just 20 per cent of the resource will sustain future development and liquefied natural gas exports in B.C. for the next 160 years.