Gulf South Pipeline Company, LLC; Notice of Scoping Period Requesting Comments on Environmental Issues for the Proposed Parks Line Upgrade and Sorrento Station Project

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY <SUBAGY>Federal Energy Regulatory Commission</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. CP25-54-000]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Gulf South Pipeline Company, LLC; Notice of Scoping Period Requesting Comments on Environmental Issues for the Proposed Parks Line Upgrade and Sorrento Station Project</SUBJECT> The staff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC or Commission) will prepare an environmental document that will discuss the environmental impacts of the Parks Line Upgrade and Sorrento Station (PLUSS) Project (Project) involving construction and operation of facilities by Gulf South Pipeline Company, LLC (Gulf South) in St. Martin and Ascension Parishes, Louisiana. The Commission will use this environmental document in its decision-making process to determine whether the project is in the public convenience and necessity. This notice announces the opening of the scoping process the Commission will use to gather input from the public and interested agencies regarding the project. As part of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review process, the Commission takes into account concerns the public may have about proposals and the environmental impacts that could result from its action whenever it considers the issuance of a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity. This gathering of public input is referred to as “scoping.” The main goal of the scoping process is to focus the analysis in the environmental document on the important environmental issues. Additional information about the Commission's NEPA process is described below in the NEPA Process and Environmental Document section of this notice. By this notice, the Commission requests public comments on the scope of issues to address in the environmental document. To ensure that your comments are timely and properly recorded, please submit your comments so that the Commission receives them in Washington, DC on or before 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on April 11, 2025. Comments may be submitted in written form. Further details on how to submit comments are provided in the Public Participation section of this notice. Your comments should focus on the potential environmental effects, reasonable alternatives, and measures to avoid or lessen environmental impacts. Your input will help the Commission staff determine what issues they need to evaluate in the environmental document. Commission staff will consider all written comments during the preparation of the environmental document. If you submitted comments on this project to the Commission before the opening of this docket on January 28, 2025, you will need to file those comments in Docket No. CP25-54-000 to ensure they are considered as part of this proceeding. This notice is being sent to the Commission's current environmental mailing list for this project. State and local government representatives should notify their constituents of this proposed project and encourage them to comment on their areas of concern. If you are a landowner receiving this notice, a pipeline company representative may contact you about the acquisition of an easement to construct, operate, and maintain the proposed facilities. The company would seek to negotiate a mutually acceptable easement agreement. You are not required to enter into an agreement. However, if the Commission approves the project, the Natural Gas Act conveys the right of eminent domain to the company. Therefore, if you and the company do not reach an easement agreement, the pipeline company could initiate condemnation proceedings in court. In such instances, compensation would be determined by a judge in accordance with state law. The Commission does not subsequently grant, exercise, or oversee the exercise of that eminent domain authority. The courts have exclusive authority to handle eminent domain cases; the Commission has no jurisdiction over these matters. Gulf South provided landowners a fact sheet prepared by the FERC entitled “An Interstate Natural Gas Facility On My Land? What Do I Need To Know?” which addresses typically asked questions, including the use of eminent domain and how to participate in the Commission's proceedings. This fact sheet along with other landowner topics of interest are available for viewing on the FERC website ( <E T="03">www.ferc.gov</E> ) under the Natural Gas, Landowner Topics link. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Public Participation</HD> There are three methods you can use to submit your comments to the Commission. Please carefully follow these instructions so that your comments are properly recorded. The Commission encourages electronic filing of comments and has staff available to assist you at (866) 208-3676 or <E T="03">FercOnlineSupport@ferc.gov.</E> (1) You can file your comments electronically using <E T="03">the eComment feature,</E> which is located on the Commission's website ( <E T="03">www.ferc.gov</E> ) under the link to FERC Online. Using eComment is an easy method for submitting brief, text-only comments on a project; (2) You can file your comments electronically by using the eFiling feature, which is located on the Commission's website ( <E T="03">www.ferc.gov</E> ) under the link to FERC Online. With eFiling, you can provide comments in a variety of formats by attaching them as a file with your submission. New eFiling users must first create an account by clicking on “eRegister.” You will be asked to select the type of filing you are making; a comment on a particular project is considered a “Comment on a Filing”; or (3) You can file a paper copy of your comments by mailing them to the Commission. Be sure to reference the project docket number (CP25-54-000) on your letter. Submissions sent via the U.S. Postal Service must be addressed to: Debbie-Anne A. Reese, Secretary, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, 888 First Street NE, Room 1A, Washington, DC 20426. Submissions sent via any other carrier must be addressed to: Debbie-Anne A. Reese, Secretary, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, 12225 Wilkins Avenue, Rockville, MD 20852. Additionally, the Commission offers a free service called eSubscription which makes it easy to stay informed of all issuances and submittals regarding the dockets/projects to which you subscribe. These instant email notifications are the fastest way to receive notification and provide a link to the document files which can reduce the amount of time you spend researching proceedings. Go to <E T="03">https://www.ferc.gov/ferc-online/overview</E> to register for eSubscription. The Commission's Office of Public Participation (OPP) supports meaningful public engagement and participation in Commission proceedings. OPP can help members of the public, including landowners, community organizations, Tribal members and others, access publicly available information and navigate Commission processes. For public inquiries and assistance with making filings such as interventions, comments, or requests for rehearing, the public is encouraged to contact OPP at (202)502-6595 or <E T="03">OPP@ferc.gov.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of the Proposed Project</HD> For the PLUSS Project, Gulf South is proposing to add 236,000 dekatherms per day (Dth/d) of capacity through: • restoration of the maximum allowable operating pressure (MAOP) of the Arnaudville to Parks Line (Parks Line or Index 330); and • construction of the Sorrento Compressor Station on its existing Index 270 system. In addition, in St. Martin Parish, Louisiana, Gulf South proposes to replace approximately 4.5 miles of non-contiguous segments of its existing 30-inch-diameter Index 330 pipeline between the existing Arnaudville Compressor Station and Parks Junction. In Ascension Parish, Louisiana, Gulf South proposes to construct a new compressor station on its existing 24-inch-diameter Index 270 pipeline equipped with a 12,510 horsepower Solar Mars 100 unit along with appurtenant, auxiliary facilities and a meter and regulator (M&R) station. The project includes the construction of a mainline valve and installing suction and discharge piping to and from the Index 270 pipeline to establish a connection with the new compressor station. A delivery lateral is also proposed to link the new M&R station located within the proposed Sorrento Compressor Station to the Project customers' facilities, along with an inline inspection tool receiver site to be built at the interconnect. The general location of the project facilities is shown in appendix 1. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  The appendices referenced in this notice will not appear in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> . Copies of the appendices were sent to all those receiving this notice in the mail and are available at <E T="03">www.ferc.gov</E> using the link called “eLibrary.” For instructions on connecting to eLibrary, refer to the last page of this notice. For assistance, contact FERC at <E T="03">FERCOnlineSupport@ferc.gov</E> or call toll free, (886) 208-3676 or TTY (202) 502-8659. </FTNT> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Land Requirements for Construction</HD> Construction of the proposed facilities would disturb about 167.9 acres of land for the aboveground facilities and the pipeline. Following construction, Gulf South would maintain about 23.6 acres for permanent operation of the project's facilities; the remaining acreage would be restored and revert to former uses. About 90 percent of the proposed pipeline route parallels existing pipeline, utility, or road rights-of-way. <HD SOURCE="HD1">NEPA Process and the Environmental Document</HD> Any environmental document issued by the Commission will discuss impacts that could occur as a result of the construction and operation of the proposed project under the relevant general resource areas: • geology and soils; • water resources and wetlands; • vegetation and wildlife; • threatened and endangered species; • cultural res ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 16k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━