Days after Sable Offshore Corp. received federal approval to restart a pair of pipelines in Santa Barbara County, the Environmental Defense Center has filed a lawsuit challenging the decision.
The EDC and other local environmental groups filed the lawsuit against the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and the Department of Transportation on Wednesday, claiming that the agencies’ decision did not meet basic standards to grant the approval, and the pipelines still pose a risk to the Gaviota Coast.
The lawsuit, filed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, also names Paul Roberti, the head of the PHMSA, and Sean Duffy, the secretary of the Department of Transportation, as defendants.
Along with the EDC, the groups bringing the lawsuit include Get Oil Out!, the Santa Barbara County Action Network, the Sierra Club, Santa Barbara Channelkeeper, the Wishtoyo Chumash Foundation and the Center for Biological Diversity.
In the lawsuit, the EDC claims that PHMSA did not conduct adequate reviews on a series of pipelines owned by Sable.
The two pipelines, CA 324 and CA 325, are owned by Sable and connected to the company’s Santa Ynez Unit. CA 324, formerly known as Plains 901, was the pipeline that ruptured in 2015 and caused the Refugio oil spill.
That break spilled 142,000 gallons of crude oil onto the Gaviota shoreline and into the ocean.
The lawsuit called the PHMSA’s actions “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with the law and/or without observance of procedure required by law.”
Sable petitioned PHMSA in November to assume regulatory oversight of the pipeline, claiming that it was an interstate system despite never leaving the state of California.
PHMSA sided with Sable and took over oversight of the pipeline under the Pipeline Safety Act. The agency approved Sable’s restart plan on Monday.
PHMSA also approved a request from Sable for a special permit that exempts the company from review for welds to the pipelines. Under the exemption, the company is not required to evaluate the welds for corrosion or address any corrosion for 180 days.
The request for the exemption was submitted on Dec. 19 and approved on Tuesday.
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, 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 additional repairs before they are safe to operate.
“Rushing to restart this failed pipeline without following basic federal safety laws and without even making the necessary repairs poses an immediate threat to lives, property and the environment across a large part of our state,” EDC chief counsel Linda Krop said.
“We can’t allow the Trump administration and Sable to undermine California law and gamble with the safety of everyone living along the pipeline route.”