JIO March 2020 Update

The Jonah Natural Gas Field is an area of west central Wyoming, south of the town of Pinedale, in the Upper Green River Basin. Jonah’s 30,000 acres of rolling sagebrush are 94 percent federally owned. The area has one of the richest concentrations of natural gas in the United States, estimated at more than 14 trillion cubic feet.

The Jonah Interagency Mitigation and Reclamation Office (JIO) was established by the Jonah Infill Development Project (JIDP) Record of Decision in March 2006 with responsibility for on-site monitoring, off-site mitigation, and adaptive management recommendations for the Jonah Field as development proceeds.

The level of development is expected to cause impacts to some resources (especially wildlife) that cannot be adequately mitigated on-site during field development. Therefore, Operators in the JIDP contributed $24.5 million in mitigation funds to develop projects whose focus is to enhance habitat for wildlife usage and protection.

Additionally, air quality mitigation for the JIDP was jointly developed by the BLM, EPA, WDEQ, USFS and NPS which created mitigation requirements based on results of the supplemental air quality report completed in the summer of 2005. Mitigation requirements included a reduction of projected visibility impacts to nearby Class I airsheds by 80 percent from the worst-case emissions scenario.

Funds for the JIDP mitigation and monitoring projects are held in the Wyoming Wildlife and Natural Resources Trust
account and are administered by the JIO.