A federal appeals court this week denied a request to stay, or pause, federal approval of Sable Offshore Corp.’s restart plans for Santa Barbara County oil production.
Sable Offshore Corp. is the Texas-based company that now owns the Santa Ynez Unit of offshore oil production platforms, a processing facility and transportation pipelines in Santa Barbara County.
Production has been shut down since the 2015 Refugio oil spill, which was caused by one of the pipelines rupturing and spilling crude oil onto the shoreline and into the ocean.
Sable has been working to restart production, and recently received federal approval from the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration.
The Santa Barbara-based Environmental Defense Center and other groups filed a lawsuit challenging the PHMSA and Department of Transportation decision, saying the pipelines still pose a risk to the Gaviota Coast.
The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision Wednesday denying the request to stay the approval, and set a deadline of Jan. 26 for an opening brief in the case.
Sable petitioned PHMSA in November to take over regulatory authority for the pipelines, arguing that it was an interstate system despite it never leaving the state.
PHMSA sided with Sable and assumed oversight of the pipelines, and then approved the company’s restart plan on Dec. 22, as Noozhawk previously reported.
PHMSA also approved emergency special permits that exempt the company from review for welds to the pipelines.
The agency granted the request in a letter that claimed that the emergency approval was granted because of “the acute energy shortage conditions identified in Executive Order 14156 within California and in the West Coast region of the United States.”
The EDC criticized those decisions in the lawsuit, stating that they did not meet the minimum standard for approval.
The organization stated that the decision also contradicts recent findings by the Office of the State Fire Marshal, which found that the pipelines still require repairs before they are safe to operate.
Sable has been conducting work on the pipelines along the Gaviota Coast, allegedly without necessary state permits, and was fined $18 million by the California Coastal Commission.
The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors recently denied the company’s request to transfer local permits from the previous owner/operator, with officials citing concerns about Sable’s safety record, criminal charges and ongoing lawsuits.