For the first time in more than a decade, offshore oil is flowing again through a controversial network of pipelines running from California’s Central Coast to Kern County.
Following an executive order from President Trump last week, Sable Offshore Corp. announced on monday It restarted oil flow through pipelines running in Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Kern counties. The infrastructure is part of an offshore oil operation that the Houston-based company has been trying to restart for more than a year.
The resumption of oil transport via pipelines marks the latest escalation in a long-running battle between California officials and the Trump administration over energy policy and security measures.
The oil network had been shut down since 2015, when a damaged pipe burst and caused one of the state’s worst oil spills. The so-called Santa Ynez unit was under different ownership at that time.
Sable had struggled to obtain the necessary approvals and permits from California regulators to restart offshore oil operations. In the process, Sable has also been accused of repeatedly ignoring instructions from state and local officials criminal act Relating to California environmental and coastal laws.
On Friday, Trump and Energy Secretary Chris Wright invoked the Cold War-era Defense Production Act and ordered Sable to restore operations at the Santa Ynez unit, arguing that the nation’s energy needs to replace state and local regulations.
It’s a move that California officials have ridiculed and are already fighting.
On Saturday, the California Department of Parks and Recreation demanded that sable “IMMEDIATELY REMOVE THE PIPELINE” The company’s application to operate the line through the protected area where it passes through Gaviota State Park has been formally rejected.
The agency said it had closed its review of Sable’s project “due to Sable’s excessive expenditure of state resources and the incompatibility of their project with the parks entity.” The letter said the agency would “take legal action to protect the state’s property rights” if Sable did not respond soon with a closure plan.
Following Sable’s announcement Monday morning that it had resumed operation of the pipelines, a State Parks spokesperson said the agency “will take further action” but declined to elaborate on those plans.
The California State Land Commission, which was overseeing oversight of Sable’s offshore pipelines, called an emergency meeting Monday night to consider additional litigation addressing potential violations of the federal consent decree that handed over oversight of pipelines to some state agencies.
Sable acknowledged California State Parks’ letter in her announcement Monday, but noted that she had filed a new lawsuit against the agency the day before. The lawsuit filed in federal court seeks confirmation that Sable has the authority to operate through the park under Trump’s executive order.
Sable has been tied up in multiple lawsuits with California officials and environmental groups over pipelines, but this would be the first case to test the Defense Production Act’s authority to overrule California laws, regulations and a federal consent decree.
Governor Gavin Newsom called Trump’s use of the Defense Production Act an attempt to “illegally restart a pipeline whose operators are facing criminal charges and are banned from restarting by multiple court orders.”
The Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental nonprofit that has pushed for greater oversight of Sable’s work, called the use of the DPA “radical and unprecedented.”
“The reprehensible abuse of a national security law for the benefit of an oil company that has repeatedly broken the law is a shocking development, even by this administration,” Brady Bradshaw, the nonprofit organization’s senior oceans campaigner, said in a statement. “The courts should not tolerate this brazen abuse of power. … We will continue to fight as hard as we can to protect Santa Barbara’s coast and end offshore drilling in the state forever.”
Alex Katz, executive director of the Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center, said he’s concerned not only about the precedent it sets, but also the climate concerns it could cause.
“Critically, this operation brings back the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions into Santa Barbara County, worsening our air quality and potentially adding millions of tons of carbon to the atmosphere each year,” Katz said in a statement. “A faulty pipeline operating at high pressure with no legal protections is a threat to public safety, our economy, and the entire coast.”
However, Sable officials and the Trump administration argue that the project is essential to national security and will benefit consumers.
“Sable Offshore is putting California consumers first by increasing domestic supply of crude oil to the California market by approximately 17% and we look forward to continuing execution as ordered,” Jim Flores, Sable’s chief executive officer, said in a statement. “We look forward to working closely with the Department of Energy in full compliance with the DPA and working with the Trump Administration to take all necessary steps to provide the energy needed to protect and defend the nation.”
Sable said it had restarted production at one of its three offshore oil platforms last May, but was unable to transport oil through onshore pipelines due to ongoing legal and regulatory disruptions.
The company said it had 540,000 barrels of processed crude in storage as of this weekend, and it planned to bring two of its other offshore rigs — all in federal waters — online by June.
Sable plans to begin selling 50,000 barrels per day by April 1.
“Sable remains fully staffed and will continue to enforce the terms of the emergency special permit,” the company wrote in its update.
