A coalition of environmental organizations filed a lawsuit last month in the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to stay the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration approval for Sable Offshore Corp. to restart its pipeline.
The pipeline has been shut down for more than a decade after a 2015 rupture and a serious oil leak near Refugio State Beach.
The environmentalists’ suit should be supported by the California Coastal Commission, the state Fire Marshal’s Office and Santa Barbara County.
It cannot be overstated how important this would be. It could be done by submitting friend of the court briefs in support of the lawsuit filed by the Environmental Defense Center and the Center for Biological Diversity, along with their clients, including the Sierra Club and Santa Barbara Channelkeeper.
The approval by the PHMSA, part of President Donald Trump’s administration, is an attempt to usurp both state and local laws, which have challenged the reopening of the pipeline due to Sable Offshore’s inability to ensure pipeline repair and safety, and comply with state regulations.
However, the ultimate goal of the PHMSA’s attempted usurpation of state and local authority is to restart oil production from three offshore platforms (Harmony, Heritage and Hondo) in the Santa Ynez Unit off Santa Barbara.
The platforms have been offline since the 2015 pipeline rupture due to the inability to use the line to move the oil for refining.
Regardless of state and local opposition, Sable Offshore began restarting production from Platform Harmony last May, with plans to restart the others by late this year.
The 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution reserves powers not given to the federal government for the states, in order to limit federal overreach.
All of these organizations have been empowered under California law to be the governing body for the County of Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara County), to regulate hazardous liquid pipelines (State Fire Marshal), and regulate coastal development (California Coastal Commission).
Because they have all been involved with regulating Sable Offshore, the appellate court needs to hear from them to ensure the court has a full understanding of the record and what is actually happening.
What is happening under the guise of interstate commerce (even though the pipeline never leaves the Central Coast), and an emergency oil shortage (even though the United States is the world’s largest producer of oil), is PHMSA supporting Trump’s desire to “drill baby drill” and deny climate change as a “hoax” in a blue state that is enforcing oil safety regulations and believes in fighting climate change, and therefore wants to reduce oil production.
For the appellate court to make an informed decision, it is essential that it understand state interactions with Sable Offshore, including willful violations of state and coastal safety regulations, and the county’s opposition to the pipeline.
For the better part of the last year, Sable and the Coastal Commission were enmeshed in a struggle over the state agency’s jurisdictional authority to require the company to apply for and obtain coastal development permits for its pipeline repair work.
In April, the commission fined Sable $18 million for defying two cease-and-desist orders, issued by the commission for doing work on the pipeline despite having been informed that it needed to apply for and obtain coastal development permits to do so.
The state Fire Marshal’s Office is responsible for overseeing the pipeline’s repair and has raised safety concerns about safety repairs.
And in 2025, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors voted to deny Sable Offshore’s application to transfer the title and permits to operate from ExxonMobil.
The appellate court needs to understand Sable’s violations of state safety regulations and the overall context of the climate change issue before it.
This can be done by the county, the Coastal Commission and the State Fire Marshal filing amicus briefs in support of the Environmental Defense Center and the Center for Biological Diversity’s positions.