President Trump issued a Defense Product Act-based executive order to get oil flowing again off the California coast. State judge basically ruled a previous California court injunction against offshore oil drilling superseded that EO.
Posted by Leslie Eastman
Last month, President Donald Trump issued an executive order authorizing the Secretary of the Department of Energy to greenlight Sable Offshore oil company’s ongoing efforts to restart production at the much-fought-over Santa Ynez Unit off the coast near Santa Barbara, California.
Energy Secretary Christ Wright quickly followed up by doing exactly that.
“Today’s order will strengthen America’s oil supply and restore a pipeline system vital to our national security and defense, ensuring that the West Coast military installations have the reliable energy critical to military readiness,” Wright stated.
…Friday’s presidential executive order and action of the Energy Secretary come shortly on the heels of the lengthy Department of Justice legal opinion concluding that the restart of Sable Offshore’s plant falls within the scope and jurisdiction of the Defense Production Act. The restart action flies in the face of opinions rendered by the California Attorney General and the Office of the State Fire Marshal. Last October, the Fire Marshal issued a ruling decreeing that Sable had not yet done enough repair work on a pipeline that spilled 142,000 gallons of crude in a leak in 2015. That spill was due to systemic corrosion to the pipeline.
This basically opened an oil spigot that had been shut off by a California court’s previous order halting oil production in this region. Sable considered the Defense Production Act-based executive order to have trumped the state’s ruling.
Empowered by this move and in response to escalating gasoline prices (including historic ones in the Golden State high enough to get Democrats to rescind the gas tax), Sable began pumping out 60,000 barrels of oil daily. As an added bonus, 100 jobs were created with more hires slated for the near future.
During an exclusive visit to the newly reopened platforms, where oil is once again flowing through onshore pipelines in Santa Barbara following a Trump executive order, The California Post sat down with the facility’s executive, who offered a pointed but measured response to the Democrat outcry at the decision, which is still facing legal action to shut it down again.
“We have a perfect, safe restart of the pipeline,” J. Caldwell Flores, president and COO of Sable Offshore Corp., told The Post.
“We recognize we’re providing a necessary service to California and the country as a whole.”
About 100 new jobs have already been created, and an additional 200 are expected once all three platforms are fully operational, according to Sable.
However, a state judge has decided she has more power than the President when it comes to the nation’s energy security.
Oil development off Santa Barbara County’s Gaviota Coast has long turned on fine legal margins — interstate versus intrastate, State Fire Marshal versus the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, court orders versus claims of immunity. On Friday morning, in the Santa Barbara courtroom of Judge Donna Geck, one of those margins snapped into focus.
Geck refused to lift the injunction blocking Sable Offshore Corp. from restarting its pipeline system — even as oil continues to flow.
That alone might sound like just procedural sparring, but this time, the ruling did something new: It rejected, for the first time, Sable’s argument that a federal order issued under the Defense Production Act allows it to sidestep state law and the court’s prior orders.
“This is the first time a court has recognized that the Defense Production Act order does not relieve Sable of its requirements under state law,” said Talia Nimmer, staff attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD).
Sable Offshore Corp. plans to fight this ruling vigorously. It also plans to continue pumping oil.
The oil giant vowed to fight the “show-cause” process in court next month and pointed out it had been given the green light to reopen by the president.
Judge Donna Geck of the Santa Barbara Superior Court said last week a state injunction on the gas giant was still in place, blocking it from restarting and handing a win to Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Jeffrey Dintzer, attorney for Sable Offshore, told the California Post: “We’re disappointed that the court chose not to rescind the order.
…“The pipeline is still operational, and we are continuing to pump crude through the Santa Ynez system pursuant to the order of Secretary Wright who is authorized by the president.”
Hot Air’s John Sexton has a few thoughts on how this legal battle will continue:
Judge Geck has set a hearing for next month to decide whether to hold the company in contempt of court. Hopefully a higher court will correct Judge Geck on appeal. Then again, it’s possible the emergency, in the form of the war with Iran, will be over before this gets sorted out.
The clash unfolding off the coast of Santa Barbara is more than a regional permitting dispute. It’s more like a live test of whether federal authority on energy security carries any real weight when it collides with California’s regulatory regime. For now, Sable is operating in a legal gray zone where oil is flowing, jobs are materializing, and gasoline relief is tangible, despite a state court insisting none of it should be happening.
Once again, California finds itself in the familiar position of needing the very energy infrastructure its political leadership keeps trying to shut down, and the contradictions are getting harder to ignore.
