Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to Alaska LNG Project in Cook Inlet

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE <SUBAGY>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>50 CFR Part 217</CFR> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. 251205-0179]</DEPDOC> <RIN>RIN 0648-BN50</RIN> <SUBJECT>Takes of Marine Mammals Incidental to Specified Activities; Taking Marine Mammals Incidental to Alaska LNG Project in Cook Inlet</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Commerce. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule; notification of issuance of Letter of Authorization. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> NMFS, upon request from 8 Star Alaska, LLC (8 Star Alaska), which is jointly owned by Glenfarne and Alaska Gasline Development Corporation (AGDC), is promulgating regulations to govern the taking of marine mammals incidental to the Alaska Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) project in Cook Inlet, Alaska, over the course of 5 years. These regulations, which allow for the issuance of a Letter of Authorization (LOA) for the incidental take of marine mammals during the specified activities in the specified geographical region during the effective dates of the regulations, prescribe the permissible methods of taking and other means of effecting the least practicable adverse impact on marine mammal species or stocks and their habitat, as well as requirements pertaining to the monitoring and reporting of such taking. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective from January 1, 2026, through December 31, 2030. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> Electronic copies of the application and supporting documents, the proposed rule and associated public comments, as well as a list of the references cited in this document, may be obtained online at: <E T="03">https://www.fisheries.noaa.gov/national/marine-mammal-protection/incidental-take-authorizations-oil-and-gas.</E> In case of problems accessing these documents, please call the contact listed below. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Kristy Jacobus, Office of Protected Resources, NMFS, (301) 427-8401. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Purpose of Regulatory Action</HD> These regulations, promulgated under the authority of the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) (16 U.S.C. 1361 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ), establish a framework for NMFS to authorize the take of marine mammals incidental to activities associated with the Alaska LNG Project in Cook Inlet, Alaska. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Legal Authority for the Action</HD> Section 101(a)(5)(A) of the MMPA (16 U.S.C. 1371(a)(5)(A)) directs the Secretary of Commerce, as delegated to NMFS, to allow, upon request, the incidental, but not intentional, taking of small numbers of marine mammals by U.S. citizens who engage in a specified activity (other than commercial fishing) within a specified geographical region for up to 5 years if, after notice and public comment, the agency makes certain findings and promulgates regulations that set forth permissible methods of taking pursuant to that activity and other means of effecting the “least practicable adverse impact” on the affected species or stocks and their habitat (see Mitigation section), as well as monitoring and reporting requirements. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of Major Provisions Within the Rule</HD> Following is a summary of the major provisions of this rule regarding 8 Star Alaska's activities: • NMFS may authorize, through a LOA, the take of small numbers of marine mammals, by harassment only; • Mitigation measures are required during certain activities should a marine mammal be detected within identified zones; and • Restrictions related to beluga whales are required during summer months in the western portion of Cook Inlet. Through adaptive management, the regulations will allow NMFS to modify ( <E T="03">e.g.,</E> remove, revise, or add to) the existing mitigation, monitoring, or reporting measures summarized above and required by the LOA, as appropriate. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Background</HD> The MMPA prohibits the “take” of marine mammals, with certain exceptions. Sections 101(a)(5)(A) and (D) of the MMPA (16 U.S.C. 1361 <E T="03">et seq.</E> ) direct the Secretary of Commerce (as delegated to NMFS) to allow, upon request, the incidental, but not intentional, taking of small numbers of marine mammals by U.S. citizens who engage in a specified activity (other than commercial fishing) within a specified geographical region if certain findings are made and either regulations are promulgated or an incidental harassment authorization is issued. The MMPA provides that authorization for incidental takings shall be granted if NMFS finds that the taking will have a negligible impact on the species or stock(s) and will not have an unmitigable adverse impact on the availability of the species or stock(s) for taking for subsistence uses (where relevant). Further, NMFS must prescribe the permissible methods of taking and other “means of effecting the least practicable adverse impact” on the affected species or stocks and their habitat, paying particular attention to rookeries, mating grounds, and areas of similar significance and on the availability of the species or stocks for taking for certain subsistence uses (collectively referred to as “mitigation”); and requirements pertaining to the monitoring and reporting of the takings. The definitions of all applicable MMPA statutory terms used above are included in the relevant sections below and can be found in section 3 of the MMPA (16 U.S.C. 1362) and NMFS regulations at 50 CFR 216.103. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act</HD> This project is covered under Title 41 of the Fixing America's Surface Transportation Act, or “FAST-41.” FAST-41 includes a suite of provisions designed to expedite the environmental review for covered infrastructure projects, including enhanced interagency coordination as well as milestone tracking on the public-facing Permitting Dashboard. 8 Star Alaska's project is listed on the Permitting Dashboard. Milestones and schedules related to the environmental review and permitting for the Alaska LNG Project can be found at <E T="03">https://www.permits.performance.gov/permitting-project/fast-41-covered-projects/alaska-lng-project.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of Request</HD> On December 5, 2024, NMFS received a request from 8 Star Alaska for regulations and a LOA to take marine mammals incidental to construction of LNG facilities in Cook Inlet, Alaska. Following NMFS' review of the application, 8 Star Alaska submitted a revised version on April 3, 2025, which was deemed adequate and complete. On April 8, 2025, NMFS published a notice of receipt (NOR) of application in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> (90 FR 15137), requesting comments and information during a 30-day public comment period related to 8 Star Alaska's request. NMFS received one letter from the Center for Biological Diversity and Cook Inletkeeper providing substantive comments and approximately 14,000 comments from members of the public expressing general opposition to 8 Star Alaska's proposed project but providing no specific concerns relevant to the information contained within 8 Star Alaska's application or to NMFS' determination that the application was adequate and complete. The comment letters from members of the public followed a generic template format in which respondents provided comments that were identical or substantively the same. NMFS has reviewed the submitted material and considered it for promulgation of these regulations. NMFS published a proposed rulemaking and request for public comments in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> for 8 Star Alaska's project on July 29, 2025 (90 FR 35762, July 29, 2025). All comments were considered in development of this final rule (see Comments and Responses section). Except with respect to certain activities not pertinent here, section 3(18) of the MMPA defines “harassment” as any act of pursuit, torment, or annoyance, which (i) has the potential to injure a marine mammal or marine mammal stock in the wild (Level A harassment); or (ii) has the potential to disturb a marine mammal or marine mammal stock in the wild by causing disruption of behavioral patterns, including, but not limited to, migration, breathing, nursing, breeding, feeding, or sheltering (Level B harassment). NMFS is authorizing take of 12 species of marine mammals by Level B harassment and Level A harassment for a subset of 3 of these species. Neither 8 Star Alaska nor NMFS expect serious injury or mortality to result from the specified activities and neither may be authorized. However, since 8 Star Alaska's LNG facility construction activities are expected to last for 5 years, authorization under section 101(a)(5)(A) is appropriate. NMFS previously promulgated regulations and issued an LOA to AGDC for the same work on September 15, 2020 (85 FR 59291, September 21, 2020), effective from January 1, 2021, through December 31, 2025. However, no work has been conducted during the effective period of that LOA, and none is planned prior to its expiration. <HD SOURCE="HD1">Description of the Specified Activity</HD> 8 Star Alaska will construct facilities to transport and offload LNG in Cook Inlet, Alaska, for export. Project activities include the construction of a Marine Terminal comprised of a temporary Marine Terminal Material Offloading Facility (MOF) and a permanent Product Loading Facility (PLF) on the east side of Cook Inlet, near Nikiski; construction of a pipeline (referred to as the Mainline) across Cook Inlet; and construction of a Mainline MOF on the west side of Cook Inlet, north of Tyonek. The components of the construction activities that have the potential to expose marine mammals to sound levels that cou ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 289k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━