1. OFFICIAL DESIGNATION: Jonah Interagency Mitigation and Reclamation Office

2. BACKGROUND: The Jonah Natural Gas Field is an area of west central Wyoming, south of the town of Pinedale, within the Upper Green River Basin. It includes about 30,000 acres of rolling sagebrush covered lands that are about 80 percent federally managed surface and 83 percent federally managed minerals. It is an area of intense oil and gas development in ‘tight sands.’ The drilling spacing necessary to efficiently recover the oil and gas resource is denser than in traditional oil and gas field development. Further, the area has visual, wildlife and other resource values that complicate resource management issues.

3. PURPOSE: The Jonah Interagency Office (Project Office) will provide the services necessary to execute plans, monitoring, and other activities necessary to assure the effectiveness of land management recommendations, reclamation actions, and mitigation in the vicinity of the Jonah Natural Gas Field in accordance with the Record of Decision (ROD) for the Jonah Infill Drilling Project. In addition, the Project Office will provide oversight of funds available for reclamation monitoring and mitigation (offsite and onsite).

The scope of work for the Project Office includes the following:

4. OFFICE OBJECTIVES AND DUTIES: The Project Office will be staffed by full time employees or contractors of the responsible agencies. All personnel will have primary duties related to the implementation or support of monitoring and environmental compliance and permitting, focusing on, but not limited to, air, water, wildlife and reclamation monitoring of on-site and designated off-site mitigation acres related to Jonah Field development. Any tasks assigned to these employees or contractors outside this primary function would be supported by funds other than those described below in paragraph 10. The Bureau of Land Management will maintain the lease for the Project Office space.

Public and interagency reporting of resource conditions will occur on a regular basis . From time to time, state agencies may meet with interested citizens to inform interested stakeholders, and to discuss ongoing and anticipated mitigation and monitoring.

5. TERMINATION DATE: The cooperators anticipate that a need for an expanded personnel presence in the vicinity of the Jonah Natural Gas Field will continue to exist for the next 5 to 15 years. Periodically, the interagency staff will meet to review Project Office staffing needs and need for continuance of the individual staff.

6. JONAH INTERAGENCY OFFICE MANAGEMENT:

Jonah Project Office Coordinator Bureau of Land Management
Department of the Interior
432 East Mill Street
P.O. Box 768
Pinedale , Wyoming 82941

7. ADMINISTRATIVE SUPPORT: Administrative support and funding for the Project Office will be provided by EnCana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. contributions as set forth in #10 below.

8. ESTIMATED ANNUAL COST: The Project Office will require approximately $600,000 annually for all personnel, support, and office costs. This is established as follows:

Each of the agencies listed in #9 below will employ a person/contractor to accomplish the work identified above. Annually, each of the Charter Members in #9 will develop a budget. All Charter Members will concur on budget estimates. Annually, or at another mutually agreed to interval, the duties and needs for each Project Office position will be examined by the Agency Managers Committee and mutually agreed to adjustments will be made. This could include office staffing increases, decreases, identification and expansion or contraction of duties. The primary duty location of the team is Pinedale, Wyoming.

9. JONAH INTERAGENCY OFFICE CHARTER MEMBERS:

The Charter Members will approve all disbursements of funds contributed by EnCana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. or other industry contributors for the purpose of wildlife habitat improvement, resource monitoring and/or other mitigation.

10. FUNDING: EnCana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. will provide funding to support the costs of the project office for a period of six years. The Project Office funding mechanism will be memorialized in the Jonah Infill EIS ROD. It is expected that participating operator(s) will see timely permitting to the extent permitted by law. Other time economies related to confirmation of reclamation activities and increased public visibility of timely and successful environmental remediation and reclamation are also anticipated.

11. NATURE AND DUTIES OF THE AGENCY MANAGERS COMMITTEE: At least once per year, the Agency Managers committee, consisting of the agency heads or representatives from the Agencies in #9 above, and a single member of each of the oil and gas industry proponents involved in the Project Office will meet. At that annual oversight meeting, progress will be evaluated, and direction, coverage and staffing for the next year would be considered and adopted. At a minimum, the Agency Managers committee would provide the ‘big picture’ needs for the Project Office. For the initial period, this would include: 1.) Establish the initial mitigation and monitoring program for Air, Water, Wildlife, Livestock and Reclamation: 2.) selection and utilization of appropriate software or reporting standards to insure that all data collected would be stored and utilized in meeting the monitoring commitments contained in EIS’s and other environmental documents: 3.) Coordination and tracking of ongoing research being conducted in the Jonah Project area to provide advice and recommendations on environmental monitoring and needed science to document the effects of Energy development: and 4.) Reporting.

12. AUTHORITY: The establishment of the Project Office is in the public interest in connection with the duties and responsibilities delegated to the BLM by the Secretary of the United States Department of the Interior in managing the public lands under section 307(b) of the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, 43 USC § 1737(b).

13. Nothing in this charter shall change the responsibilities or negotiated agreements of any State agency as it relates to dealing with impacts of development in southwest Wyoming.