There is a fascinating battle taking place in California right now between a mongoose named Sable Offshore Corp., an offshore drilling company, and a snake called the California Coast Commission.
The California Coastal Commission is another largely unaccountable and out-of-control environmental agency. It has been around for almost half a century and was created under the California Coastal Act to achieve lofty goals, which includes the following:
The Legislature further finds and declares that, notwithstanding the fact electrical generating facilities, refineries, and coastal-dependent developments, including ports and commercial fishing facilities, offshore petroleum and gas development, and liquefied natural gas facilities, may have significant adverse effects on coastal resources or coastal access, it may be necessary to locate such developments in the coastal zone in order to ensure that inland as well as coastal resources are preserved and that orderly economic development proceeds within the state.
It also includes the following directive regarding the membership of the Commission:
In making their appointments pursuant to this division, the Governor, the Senate Committee on Rules, and the Speaker of the Assembly shall make good faith efforts to assure that their appointments, as a whole, reflect, to the greatest extent feasible, the economic, social, and geographic diversity of the state.
Unfortunately, neither of those goals is being achieved today. The current membership consists entirely of academics, advocates, and politicos thoroughly committed to stopping everything along the coast other than offshore wind facilities, which have now been added as a goal of the legislation. The Commission has turned into a full-scale environmental extremist group with the imprimatur of California government.
Fortunately, though, Sable, which has a Texas-sized set of family jewels, is taking on the Commission. The latter knows it has met an enemy that isn’t going to be easily intimidated. The evidence of this comes from a hit piece on Sable in the Los Angeles Times that the Commission probably solicited in some way. It’s filled with hyperbole, pictures of oil spills and scare-mongering quotes. But, it also reveals how the mongoose gets the snake. Here are some excerpts:
More than 50 years ago, a catastrophic oil spill along Santa Barbara’s coastline served to galvanize the modern environmental movement and also helped to usher in one of the state’s strongest conservation laws: the California Coastal Act.
Now, as the Trump administration seeks to encourage oil and gas production within federal lands and waters, that watershed conservation law is being tested along the same stretch of coastline — and in a way it never has before.
For months, a Texas-based oil company has rebuffed the authority of the California Coastal Commission — the body tasked with enforcing the act — and has instead pushed forward with controversial plans to revive oil production off the Gaviota Coast.
Ten years after another spill brought oil production here to a halt, Sable Offshore Corp. has begun repairing and upgrading the network of oil pipelines responsible for that 2015 spill, without Coastal Commission approval and ignoring the commission’s repeated demands to stop its work, officials say.
“This is the first time in the agency’s history that we’ve had a party blatantly ignore a cease and desist order like this and refuse to submit a permit application,” Cassidy Teufel, deputy director of the California Coastal Commission, told a packed town hall recently.
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Sable has accused the commission of “overreach” and insists that it has acquired the necessary approvals for its work.
The company intends to revive operations at three oil platforms known as the Santa Ynez Unit, which connects to pipelines that have been the focus of the ongoing repair work after a corroded section of those pipes ruptured near Refugio State Beach in 2015. That pipeline failure, which occurred under different ownership, spewed an estimated 140,000 gallons of crude oil, harmed hundreds of miles of coastline and cost millions to clean up…
Sable insists it does not need to comply with the latest Coastal Commission requests.
“The repair and maintenance work done to ensure the safe condition of the Santa Ynez Unit and onshore pipelines was fully authorized by coastal development permits previously approved by the California Coastal Commission and Santa Barbara County,” Steve Rusch, Sable’s vice president of environmental and governmental affairs, said in a prepared statement. “Commission staff’s unreasonable overreach is an attempt to exert influence over the planned restart of the Santa Ynez Unit oil production operations.”
In a statement of defense submitted to the Coastal Commission, Sable noted that due to updated requirements, “this pipeline will meet more stringent environmental and safety requirements than any other pipeline in the state.”
The company called the commission’s findings on environmental impacts exaggerated, and noted that it has “implemented several construction best management practices to limit impacts to coastal resources, biological resources, and archaeological resources,” Sable wrote.
If Sable succeeds in restarting operations, it would mark a surprising reversal for California’s oil and gas industry in recent years, as climate-focused policies have slowly reduced the state’s production of fossil fuels.
The Houston-based company estimates that once the Santa Ynez Unit is fully online, it could produce an estimated 28,000 barrels of oil a day, according to an investor presentation.
The unit has three offshore platforms — Hondo, Harmony and Heritage — located in federal waters a few miles off the coast. These platforms are connected to the Las Flores Canyon processing facility, inland from El Capitan State Beach, and other distribution lines that run onshore. The 2015 Refugio oil spill was caused by the rupture of a buried onshore pipeline.
Sable has said it anticipates restarting offshore oil production in the second quarter this year, but the company acknowledges that some regulatory and oversight hurdles remain. Most notably, its restart plan must be approved by the state fire marshal…
Ultimately, the matter may be determined in court. In February, Sable sued the Coastal Commission claiming it doesn’t have the authority to oversee its work.
“Sable’s representatives have told us that they’ll only stop if a court makes them, so we’ve been working with the attorney general’s office for the past month to move in that direction,” Teufel said at a town hall last month in Santa Barbara. The event drew hundreds of attendees — clearly divided between those donning Sable hats and others holding signs that read, “No polluting pipeline” and “No coastal permit, no restart.”
Don’t you love it? This is how to fight and the entire oil and gas industry ought to take note. It mimics Energy Transfer’s glorious battle with Greenpeace, so perhaps there's a new attitude spreading among energy companies.
It’s also worth noting just how bad that Los Angeles Times piece really is. Any semblance of balance would demand the telling of the story of Santa Barbara's oil seeps. From Grok:
Santa Barbara’s oil seeps are a natural phenomenon where crude oil and natural gas leak from the seafloor into the ocean, a process that has been occurring for at least 500,000 years. The Santa Barbara Channel, particularly around Coal Oil Point near Goleta, is one of the most active seep areas globally, releasing an estimated 6,500 to 7,000 gallons of oil daily—about 20 to 25 tons—along with roughly 40 tons of methane and 19 tons of reactive organic gases like ethane and propane.
This is significant; the hydrocarbon air pollution from these seeps is roughly double what all cars and trucks in Santa Barbara County produced in 1990. The oil floats to the surface, creating slicks that can stretch for miles, while weathered oil forms tar balls that wash up on beaches, impacting local ecosystems and wildlife, especially seabirds like common murres, which lose their waterproofing and suffer hypothermia when coated in oil.
The seeps are driven by the region’s geology. The Santa Barbara Channel sits on a geologically active zone, influenced by the San Andreas Fault and other fault systems. Organic-rich sediment, buried 16 to 5 million years ago, transformed into oil and gas under heat and pressure. The resulting shale was fractured by tectonic activity, creating pathways for hydrocarbons to migrate upward.
In areas like the South Ellwood Oil Field, the oil is relatively close to the surface—about a kilometer below the seabed—and the overlying sediment is thin, making seepage more likely. The pressure in these underground reservoirs, combined with the faulted structure, forces oil and gas to the surface through cracks in the seafloor.
Research around Platform Holly, an offshore rig in the South Ellwood Oil Field, shows that extracting oil and gas can lower the pressure in underground reservoirs, thereby reducing seepage. Studies from the 1990s, including one by UC Santa Barbara researchers, found a 50% decrease in seepage over 22 years near Platform Holly as oil was pumped out.
A more recent study by Emeritus Professor James Boles confirmed that gas production from the platform significantly cut methane seepage in the area. The logic is straightforward: removing hydrocarbons lowers the pressure that pushes them to the surface.
Some advocate for lifting moratoriums on offshore drilling in California to target areas with high seepage, arguing that modern drilling technologies are safer and could reduce natural seepage by relieving pressure. Organizations like Stop Oil Seeps California have pushed this idea, citing the environmental benefits of reducing methane emissions and tar on beaches.
The fact none of this is told in the story tells us everything we need to know about mainstream press uselessness. Sable knows that. It also knows the LA Times circulation has dropped to 125,000 (print and digital), which is a stunning 93.6%” fall from its 1990 peak of 1,225,189. It no longer matters and with California gas prices being where they are today, the public is more interested in bringing those prices down with more production than catering to out-of-control environmentalists running an agency like it was their own private NGO. Those days are nearing an end. Go Sable!
#Sable #OffshoreDrilling #California #CoastalCommission #Mongoose #Snake #GasPrices #OilSeeps #Santabarbara
Fight the good fight - and send me a Sable hat!
The oil seeps story is fascinating - thanks.