Sable Offshore Corp. announced Monday that it has begun selling oil after it restarted production at one of its three platforms and is transporting oil through its Santa Barbara County pipelines.

The pipeline was filled from the Las Flores Canyon processing facility on the Gaviota Coast to Pentland Station in Kern County “at a rate in excess of 50,000 barrels of oil per day,” the company statement said.

Sable took over ExxonMobil Santa Ynez Unit assets in 2024 and has been working to restart production that has been shut down since a transportation pipeline ruptured and caused the 2015 Refugio oil spill in southern Santa Barbara County. There has been widespread pushback from local government, oversight agencies and environmentalist groups, and several lawsuits are pending over permits and other related issues.

Platform Harmony is “currently producing” about 22,000 gross barrels of oil per day, according to Sable officials. The company intends to restart production at Platform Heritage on Monday, after federal pre-start inspections from the U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, the statement said.

The third platform, Hondo, reportedly may restart oil and gas production by midyear.

Sable expects oil production rates of more than 30,000 gross barrels per day from Platform Heritage and more than 10,000 barrels of oil per day from Platform Hondo, according to Monday’s statement.

The company had said it restarted production at Platform Harmony and transporting oil to refineries the week of March 17, but neither Sable or state agency officials would confirm whether oil was moving through the disputed pipelines in Santa Barbara County at that point.

Chevron Corp. recently announced that it will be one of the first companies to purchase crude oil from Sable and would send it to its El Segundo refinery, according to media reports. The news of the sale came shortly after Sable’s March 16 announcement that it had restarted oil production at Platform Harmony.

Multiple outlets have reported that Chevron will purchase 20,000 barrels of oil per day from Sable to start. That number could increase over time.

“Sable is proud to announce oil sales through the Santa Ynez Pipeline System to Chevron,” Sable Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Jim Flores said in Monday’s statement. “In doing so, we are providing American oil from American soil through an American pipeline to an American refinery for American consumers and the United States military.” 

Since the news of Chevron’s intent to purchase crude oil, Sable’s stocks rose 10%, according to Bloomberg.  

Based on estimates of oil in Sable’s statement, the company may plan to produce and transport more oil than ExxonMobil’s average amounts before the oil spill and shutdown.

ExxonMobil was producing an average of 30,000 barrels a day before the May 19, 2015, spill, according to county officials at the time.

The pipelines can transport a maximum of 150,000 barrels a day, but have never reached that capacity and were averaging about 34,000 in 2015, Santa Barbara County staff said at the time. That included oil from ExxonMobil, Venoco and Freeport-McMoran facilities.

Restart Plans

Sable has been working to restart oil production at the Santa Ynez Unit since it acquired the assets in 2024. One of the pipelines connected to the unit is the same pipeline that ruptured in 2015, leading to the Refugio spill.

The company that owned and operated it at the time, Plains All American Pipeline, was found criminally and civilly liable for the spill and sold the pipeline to ExxonMobil, which then transferred it along with its other Santa Ynez Unit assets to Sable.

Crews were seen installing safety valves and other pipeline work in November 2024, but were issued a cease-and-desist order by the California Coastal Commission for not having the proper permits.

The company was later fined $18 million by the commission for unpermitted work in the coastal zone and for disturbing the area.

The company was required to receive approval from the Office of the State Fire Marshal before it could restart production because of an injunction that was issued after the Refugio oil spill. The company was required to issue a restart plan for approval. 

Sable also needed to obtain easement agreements from the California State Parks. Sable and the State Parks Department were in negotiations to extend expired agreements, but State Parks ended negotiations in March. 

Sable was ordered to remove its pipelines from Gaviota State Park after negotiations fell through. California State Parks filed a lawsuit on March 17 after the company did not comply.

President Donald Trump invoked the Defense Production Act on March 13, ordering the pipeline to restart.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy and Secretary of Energy Chris Wright in his role as head of the agency. The lawsuit challenges the order to restart the pipeline under the Defense Production Act.