Startup energy company Sable Offshore Corp. has announced plans for a quick restart of ExxonMobil’s three shuttered offshore oil platforms off the Gaviota coast, but it will face stiff resistance to plans that put coastal Santa Barbara County at risk of more oil spills and pollution.

ExxonMobil’s oil platforms were once the major local oil producer responsible for 90% of the offshore oil in the Santa Barbara Channel, but production had been trending down since peaking in the 1990s.

Then in 2015, a pipeline burst, spilling 142,800 gallons of oil into one of the richest and most biologically diverse stretches of the Pacific coastline, killing hundreds of animals, tanking tourism and closing our beaches and fisheries for a time.

The oil operation has been shut down ever since, now almost nine years.

The truth is that there is no safe route to the market for oil from these platforms. The spill uncovered the fact that the pipeline was badly corroded and unsafe to use.

At the criminal sentencing hearing after the operator, Plains All-American Pipeline, was convicted in Santa Barbara County Superior Court for negligence in failing to maintain the pipeline and causing an oil spill, the prosecutor tried to prohibit the company from restarting or even threatening to restart the pipeline transporting the oil to refineries.

ExxonMobil seemed to agree that the pipeline is unsafe and impossible to fix, which is why it proposed trucking the oil and building a new pipeline instead.

Trucking oil on dangerous, windy roads was denied by Santa Barbara County, and a judge upheld that decision when ExxonMobil sued. ExxonMobil later dropped the new pipeline plan due to environmental impacts.

Now the only possible route to market is using the damaged pipeline. Work on that pipeline was denied by the county due to huge risks of restarting and was opposed by landowners where the pipeline is located.

ExxonMobil decided to cut its losses and divest itself of the operation. ExxonMobil loaned Sable Offshore $623 million to purchase the oil field and associated assets, including pipelines and the Las Flores Canyon processing plant on the coast.

Sable Offshore is raising additional funds through a blank check company called Flame Acquisition Corp. This is not a well-funded company with any track record at all, but a highly speculative venture.

Sable Offshore will face opposition to restarting the shuttered oil operation from a broad coalition of organizations as well as regulatory hurdles.

For instance, Sable Offshore claims that the state Fire Marshal’s Office will immediately approve the restart of the damaged pipeline. Given the well-documented issues with the pipeline, that seems unlikely.

In addition, the lease for another pipeline through state waters to the platforms has expired. At its December 2023 meeting, the State Lands Commission declined to renew the lease and is undertaking a study of the risks of doing so.

Given that these 40-year-old platforms were designed to last 25 years, and the State Lands Commission is on record opposing new offshore oil leases, it seems unlikely that the state will risk issuing a new lease that could result in future oil spills.

Offshore oil is wildly unpopular, opposed by 72% of Californians. Most of our population and economic output is in coastal counties that would be damaged by another coastal oil spill.

The State Lands Commission may not approve the transfer of the lease from ExxonMobil to Sable Offshore or to renew the lease at all.

Santa Barbara County would also have to approve the transfer of ownership from ExxonMobil to Sable Offshore.

County decision makers should be highly skeptical of ExxonMobil offloading liability for its aging oil operation to a startup company that would disappear in the event of a spill or other disaster.

In addition to oil spills, a restart of these oil platforms goes against state and local goals for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and it would cause local air pollution to soar.

When operating, ExxonMobil’s Las Flores Canyon oil processing facility was the largest facility source of greenhouse gas emissions in the county.

The facility was also the largest source of pollution in the county for methane, VOCs, PM2.5 and formaldehyde, and one of the largest sources for SOx, NOx, PM10, benzene and hydrochloric acid.

PM2.5 is so small it can penetrate deep into the lungs, enter the bloodstream, and be deposited in human organs and tissues, causing DNA damage, inflammation and chronic disease.

It is linked to heart and lung disease, heart attacks, asthma and premature death. The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health found that “a small increase in long-term exposure to PM2.5 leads to a large increase in the COVID-19 death rate.”

Prior to the 2015 spill, ExxonMobil’s coastal plant was about 43% of PM2.5 facility emissions in the county.

Given the pollution, the risks of offshore oil spills, the lack of a safe route to market and the fact that the big companies — Plains All-American Pipeline and ExxonMobil — have both abandoned the operation, now is the time to shutter and properly decommission these oil platforms for good — not restart them.