Leaf River Energy Center LLC; Notice of Scoping Period Requesting Comments on Environmental Issues for the Proposed Leaf River Capacity Expansion Project

<NOTICE> DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY <SUBAGY>Federal Energy Regulatory Commission</SUBAGY> <DEPDOC>[Docket No. CP26-17-000]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Leaf River Energy Center LLC; Notice of Scoping Period Requesting Comments on Environmental Issues for the Proposed Leaf River Capacity Expansion 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 Leaf River Capacity Expansion Project (Project) involving construction and operation of facilities by Leaf River Energy Center LLC (LREC) in Smith, Jasper, and Clarke counties, Mississippi. 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 <E T="03">NEPA Process and Environmental Document</E> 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 January 12, 2026. Comments may be submitted in written form. Further details on how to submit comments are provided in the <E T="03">Public Participation</E> 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 October 31, 2025, you will need to file those comments in Docket No. CP26-17-000 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. LREC provided landowners with 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 the eComment feature, 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 (CP26-17-000) 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. For public inquiries and assistance with making filings such as interventions, comments, or requests for rehearing, contact the Office of Public Participation at (202) 502-6595 or <E T="03">OPP@ferc.gov.</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">Summary of the Proposed Project</HD> LREC proposes to expand existing natural gas storage caverns and create a new natural gas storage cavern. The Leaf River Capacity Expansion Project would allow LREC to increase the certificated natural gas storage capacity at its existing New Home Salt Dome storage facility by 17.62 billion cubic feet (“Bcf”). According to LREC, the project would help satisfy market demand for incremental natural gas storage and is needed to provide critical natural gas grid reliability, and to help reduce price volatility and physical supply and demand imbalances in the Gulf Coast natural gas market. The Leaf River Capacity Expansion Project would consist of the following facilities: • one new salt dome cavern with 12.52 billion cubic feet of working gas capacity, a well pad site, wellhead equipment, and other pipeline appurtenances; • a new service corridor that includes 16-inch- and 24-inch-diameter gas headers, 16-inch-diameter raw water and brine lines, and appurtenant facilities connecting to the new cavern well; • two new gas-powered centrifugal compressors with a total of 27,010 horsepower (hp) at an existing compression facility; and • installation of a 6,130 hp gas-powered centrifugal compressor within the existing fence line of a booster station. 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> Constructing the proposed facilities would disturb about 32.0 acres of land. Following construction, LREC would maintain about 18.0 acres of land for permanent operation of the proposed facilities, and the remaining acreage would be restored and be allowed to revert to former uses. <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 resources; • land use; • air quality and noise; and • reliability and safety. Commission staff will also evaluate reasonable alternatives to the proposed project or portions of the project and make recommendations on how to lessen or avoid impacts on the various resource areas. Your comments will help Commission staff identify and focus on the issues that might have an effect on the human environment and potentially eliminate others from further study and discussion in the environmental d ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 16k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━