The Jonah Interagency Mitigation and Reclamation Office (JIO) said it selected seven out of a total of 19 project proposals received to mitigate the impact on wildlife habitat, water and air quality, and livestock forage of Jonah Field gas development in Wyoming. In this first round of projects, the JIO, which includes representatives from four state agencies and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), spent about $660,000 out of the $24.5 million donated by EnCana Corp. for the mitigation program.

EnCana expects to drill another 3,100 wells in a 30,000-acre area of the Green River Basin and has been granted authorization to disturb 14,000 acres with a potential through reclamation credits for another 6,000 acres of disturbance. There is no limit on well spacing, and in some areas currently, spacing is down to five acres. The company expects its share of gas production from Jonah to increase by 85 MMcf/d this year to about 520 MMcf/d.

The biggest impacts of this development will be on sage grouse and air quality, said JIO’s Mike Stiewig. Unfortunately quite a few of the mitigation project proposals received so far were misguided. “There were a lot of different things that just didn’t apply to what we were looking for,” said Stiewig. “There were some mitigation projects that would mitigate impacts to elk and mule deer. Unfortunately Jonah doesn’t have any impacts on elk or mule deer.

“We were really looking to mitigate impacts from a wildlife perspective on sage grouse and pronghorn. In my haste to get this out so we could get something done this summer, it just wasn’t clear enough to the public, and I think we ended up with some projects that frankly didn’t fit. But we are going to clarify that for the next round.”

Stiewig said BP has hired the Nature Conservancy to develop a model that will help guide the program going forward. “What we are going to do now is develop a strategic plan of what we want to do in the future as far as what specific mitigation we are looking for.” The model that the Nature Conservancy will develop will help “us determine where we would get the most bang for our buck,” or EnCana’s buck in this case, on wildlife mitigation.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has determined that the habitat for sage grouse in Jonah simply “doesn’t work any more,” Stiewig added. “Anything less than 160-acre well spacing and you lose habitat viability for sage grouse. We were already at 40-acre spacing in Jonah before we did infill drilling.” As a result, a sage grouse program is at the top of the list.

The programs that were selected were mainly designed to increase water supply to areas where there are livestock or wildlife to improve habitat. The mitigation measures selected “will help protect other natural resources like wildlife habitat, water and air quality, and livestock forage,” said Wyoming BLM State Director Bob Bennett. “These projects represent a solid start to improve wildlife habitat through off-site mitigation required by the Jonah Infill Development Project Record of Decision.”

The programs JIO selected in the first round include the following:

Projects deferred to the next funding cycle include:

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