Deepwater Port License Application: Texas GulfLink LLC-Final Environmental Impact Statement

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION <SUBAGY>Maritime Administration</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. MARAD-2019-0093]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Deepwater Port License Application: Texas GulfLink LLC—Final Environmental Impact Statement</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Maritime Administration, U.S. Department of Transportation. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Notice of availability; request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> The Maritime Administration (MARAD) and the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) announce the availability of the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) for the Texas GulfLink LLC (GulfLink) deepwater port license application for the export of oil from the United States to nations abroad. The GulfLink deepwater port license application describes a project that would be located approximately 26.2 nautical miles off the coast of Brazoria County, Texas. Publication of this notice announces a 45-day comment period ending on Monday, August 19, 2024, requests public participation in the final environmental impact review process and provides information on how to participate in the final environmental impact review process. </SUM> <DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> MARAD and USCG will hold one Final Hearing in connection with the GulfLink Application. The time and location for the Final Hearing will be published in a future notice. Public comments on the FEIS must be submitted to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> or the Federal Docket Management Facility as detailed in the <E T="02">ADDRESSES</E> section below by the close of business on Monday, August 19, 2024. </DATES> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Comments on the FEIS must be submitted to the U.S. Department of Transportation's Docket Management Facility or online to <E T="03">www.regulations.gov</E> under docket number MARAD-2019-0093. The address of the Docket Management Facility is as follows: U.S. Department of Transportation, MARAD-2019-0093, 1200 New Jersey Avenue SE, West Building, Room W12-140, Washington, DC 20590. Instructions are listed in the Public Participation section of this Notice. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Mr. Patrick W. Clark, Project Manager, USCG, telephone: 202-372-1358, email: <E T="03">DeepwaterPorts@USCG.mil;</E> or Dr. Linden Houston, Transportation Specialist, Office of Deepwater Ports and Port Conveyance, MARAD, telephone: 202-366-4839, email: <E T="03">Linden.Houston@dot.gov.</E> Please include “MARAD-2019-0093, GulfLink Comment” in the subject line of the message. For written comments and other material submissions, please follow the directions under the <E T="03">“How do I submit comments?”</E> question in the Public Participation section of this notice. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Prior Federal Actions</HD> On May 30, 2019, MARAD and USCG received a license application from GulfLink for all Federal authorizations required for a license to construct, own, and operate a deepwater port for the export of oil. The proposed deepwater port would be in Federal waters approximately 26.6 nautical miles off the coast of Brazoria County, Texas. Texas was designated as the ACS for the GulfLink license application. A Notice of Application that summarized the GulfLink Deepwater Port License Application was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on June 26, 2019 (84 FR 30298). A Notice of Intent to Prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) and Notice of Public Scoping Meeting was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on July 3, 2019 (84 FR 32008). A public scoping meeting in connection with the evaluation of the GulfLink license application was held in Lake Jackson, Texas on July 17, 2019. The transcript of the scoping meeting is included on the public docket located at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov/document/MARAD-2019-0093-0047.</E> A <E T="04">Federal Register</E> Notice was published on August 14, 2019 (84 FR 40476) to extend the public scoping comment period to August 30, 2019. MARAD and USCG held three virtual public comment meetings to receive comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS). A Notice of Availability for the DEIS and Notice of Public Meeting was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on November 27, 2020 (85 FR 76157). The first two virtual public comment meetings were held on December 16, 2020, and December 17, 2020. The public comment period for these meetings began on November 27, 2020, and a <E T="04">Federal Register</E> Notice was published on December 21, 2020 (85 FR 83142) to extend the comment period to January 22, 2021. Transcripts of these DEIS virtual public comment meetings are provided on the public docket at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov/document/MARAD-2019-0093-0318, www.regulations.gov/document/MARAD-2019-0093-0319,</E> and <E T="03">www.regulations.gov/document/MARAD-2019-0093-2839.</E> A Notice of Availability and Notice of Virtual Public Meeting was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on September 24, 2021 (86 FR 53144). The Federal agencies held a third virtual DEIS public comment meeting to receive comments on the DEIS. The DEIS public meeting was held virtually on October 14, 2021. The purpose of the October 14, 2021, virtual public meeting was to reopen the public comment period for the DEIS and to provide affected communities, including Limited English Proficient persons, further opportunities to review and comment on the document. The transcripts from the third DEIS public comment meeting are included on the public docket at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov/document/MARAD-2019-0093-2853.</E> After the publication of the DEIS, GulfLink revised its deepwater license application in response to ongoing consultation with regulatory agencies and subsequently refined the design of the proposed deepwater port by adding a vapor control system into the design and operation of the proposed GulfLink deepwater port. A Notice of Availability; Notice of Virtual Public Meeting; Request for Comments for the Supplemental Draft Environmental Impact Statement (SDEIS) and was published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> on September 30, 2022 (87 FR 59487) in response to proposed changes to the GulfLink deepwater port. The public meeting was held virtually on October 18, 2022. The transcripts of the SDEIS public comment meetings are also included on the public docket at <E T="03">www.regulations.gov/document/MARAD-2019-0093-3097</E> and <E T="03">www.regulations.gov/document/MARAD-2019-0093-3098.</E> This Notice of Availability incorporates the aforementioned <E T="04">Federal Register</E> notices by reference. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of the License Application</HD> GulfLink is proposing to construct, own, and operate a deepwater port terminal in the Gulf of Mexico to export domestically produced crude oil. Use of the deepwater port would include the loading of various grades of crude oil at flow rates of up to 85,000 barrels per hour (bph). The GulfLink deepwater port would allow for up to two Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) or other crude oil carriers to moor at single point mooring (SPM) buoys and connect with the deepwater port via floating connecting crude oil hoses and a floating vapor recovery hose. The maximum frequency of loading VLCCs or other crude oil carriers would be one million barrels per day, 365 days per year. The overall project would consist of offshore and marine components as well as onshore components as described below. The GulfLink deepwater port offshore and marine components would consist of the following: <E T="03">An Offshore Platform:</E> One fixed offshore platform with piles in Outer Continental Shelf Galveston Area Lease Block GA-423, 26.6 nautical miles off the coast of Brazoria County, Texas, in a water depth of approximately 104 feet. The fixed offshore platform would have four decks comprised of personal living space, pipeline metering, a surge system, a pig receiving station, generators, lease automatic custody transfer unit, oil displacement prover loop, sample system, radar tower, electrical and instrumentation building, portal cranes, a hydraulic crane, an Operations/Traffic Room, and helicopter deck. One 42-inch outside diameter, 28.1-nautical-mile long crude oil pipeline would be constructed from the shoreline crossing in Brazoria County, Texas, to the GulfLink deepwater port for crude oil delivery. This pipeline would connect the proposed onshore Jones Creek Terminal described below to the offshore platform. The fixed offshore platform is connected to VLCC tankers for loading by two separate 42-inch diameter departing pipelines. Each pipeline will depart the fixed offshore platform, carrying the crude oil to a Pipeline End Manifold (PLEM) in approximately 104 feet of water depth located 1.25 nautical miles from the fixed offshore platform. Each PLEM is then connected to a Single Point Mooring (SPM) Buoy through two 24-inch cargo hoses. Two 24-inch floating cargo hoses will connect each SPM Buoy to the VLCC (or other crude oil carrier type). SPM Buoy 1 is positioned in Outer Continental Shelf Galveston Area Lease Block GA-423 and SPM Buoy 2 is positioned in Outer Continental Shelf Galveston Area Lease Block GA-A36. Use of a dynamically positioned third-party Offshore Support Vessel, equipped with a vapor processing system to control the release of vapor emissions during the cargo loading operations of the proposed GulfLink deepwater port. Onshore storage and supply components for the GulfLink deepwater port would consist of the following: <E T="03">An Onshore Storage Terminal:</E> The proposed Jones Creek Terminal would be in Brazoria County, Texas, on approximately 319 acres of land, consisting of eight above-ground storage tanks, e ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 19k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━