Cuadrilla’s controversial bid to frack for shale gas in Lancashire has struck a rare gush of good luck after tests unearthed “excellent” conditions for fracking.

The fracking firm drilled a 1.6 mile deep vertical well at its protest-hit Preston New Road site, through two different types of shale, to reveal “excellent rock quality” for fracking.

The tests also suggest a high natural gas content in the core samples, Cuadrilla said.

The findings rebut a warning from a team of scientists at Heriot-Watt university last year that the UK’s most promising shale gas reservoirs had been warped by tectonic shifts millions of years ago.

The report claimed that these geological quirks meant Britain was unlikely to be able to produce economic amounts of shale gas.

Following the test results, Cuadrilla boss Francis Egan said he was “confident that there is a very sizeable quantity of natural gas in the Bowland Shale”.