Wyoming Petitions To Overturn Halt Of 3,500-Well Jonah Field Expansion

The state is petitioning a federal legislative panel to reverse its decision to kill a major $17.85 billion, 3,500-well natural gas project across 141,000 acres of western Wyoming.

With that in motion, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum on Friday suspended the two-judge panel’s decision until a review of it is completed, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon said Monday.

He also said in a statement that the federal Interior Board of Land Appeals (IBLA) overreached in its Jan. 15 decision to block Jonah Energy’s Normally Pressured Lance (NPL) field project, which plans to extract about 5.25 trillion cubic feet of natural gas over its lifetime.

After nearly a decade of wrangling with state and federal agencies to get approval under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the NPL project was approved by the Bureau of Land Management in 2018.

To halt the project eight years after its NEPA approval is “overreach,” Gordon said in a statement announcing the state’s petition, filed by the Attorney General’s Office.

The ruling “is not only a direct assault on Wyoming’s economy, but a blatant disregard for our state’s proven regulatory expertise,” Gordon said. 

“We are filing this petition to defend Wyoming’s right to manage its own affairs and to ensure that our energy industry, and the communities that depend on it, are not sidelined by unfounded administrative hurdles,” he added.

A positive move is that Burgum has “assumed jurisdiction over the case … and has stayed IBLA,” Gordon’s announcement says.

Protect State Authority

For Jonah Energy, the NPL project is its future in Wyoming, and the state’s interest in getting it moving again is encouraging, company Vice President Paul Ulrich told Cowboy State Daily on Monday.

“Clearly, the (IBLA) decision was more than disappointing to Jonah Energy,” he said. “We value the work we have done in reducing our impacts (on air quality) across the board and take it very seriously.”

Both Ulrich and Gordon point to the two-judge panel as interfering with Wyoming’s authority to set and enforce its own air quality rules.

“I think the decision was born out of a lack of understanding of states’ rights and the excellent work the BLM did with clearly a lot of input from the state of Wyoming, Wyoming DEQ, and other cooperating agencies,” Ulrich said.

That approval took about 8.5 years, he said, adding that for it to be suddenly reversed nearly eight years later was more than a surprise.

“We were blindsided by the decision, and every single individual we have talked about it with said they were blindsided, too,” Ulrich said.

Devastating For County

Not only does the state stand to lose about $2 billion in severance taxes and $611 million in sales tax revenue over the life of the NPL project, Sublette County also could be financially devastated, the state says in its petition.

Jonah Energy is the county’s second-largest taxpayer and a major employer. The 3,500-well expansion promises to create more than 900 jobs over its lifespan.

“The impacts are even more severe at the county level, as over 90% of Sublette County, Wyoming’s, tax revenue comes from minerals and industry,” according to the petition. “The county was projected to earn $1 billion from local gross products tax over the life of the project.”

That’s definitely a concern at the county level, said Sublette County Commission Chairman Lynn Bernard.

“Anything that prohibits our economic growth is devastating,” he said. “Jonah has been a great neighbor and asset for us for a long time.”

‘Could Have Sent It Back’

The judges who put a halt to the NPL project are Clifford Stevens and David Gunter, both President Joe Biden-era appointees in 2024.

If they found fault with Jonah’s project, there were avenues to address those other than shutting it down completely, Ulrich said.

“Instead of what they did, they could have sent it back to fix whatever they saw as a problem,” he said. “To revoke the entire decision, that is almost unheard of.

“Without that record of decision, we have 140,000 acres with valid, existing rights we cannot plan to develop,” Ulrich added. “We feel this decision, for a myriad of reasons, was not correct and needs to be fixed.”

While there “are always additional legal options” Jonah Energy can pursue to fight the administrative shutdown, Ulrich said that “our focus now is the motion to reconsider.”

He also praised Gordon and the Attorney General’s Office for “fighting for what’s right when it comes to this particular decision.”

Greg Johnson can be reached at greg@cowboystatedaily.com.