Given the South Coast’s historic antipathy to the oil industry, one might have expected a few historic gasps in response to the news that ExxonMobil — one of the biggest oil companies on the planet — has decided to sell all its onshore and offshore assets along the Gaviota Coast to a mysterious new entity called Sable Offshore Corporation. To the extent the news, released last week , qualified as a shot heard around the world, a silencer was clearly involved. Even now, Santa Barbara County energy planners, elected officials and long-term environmental activists are scrambling to figure out what’s really afoot and what influence, if any, they can hope to exert over future developments.
One thing’s for certain: Exxon’s not taking its ball and going home. Its ball remains very much in play, no matter how shut down Exxon’s production has been in the wake of the Refugio Oil Spill caused by Plains All American Pipeline in 2015.
Last week, ExxonMobil quietly confirmed the sale of all its assets associated with its Santa Ynez Unit — three offshore platforms, Heritage, Harmony, and Hondo, with 112 wells — its 135-acre production facility along the coast at Las Flores Canyon, and 123 miles of pipeline that ExxonMobil purchased from Plains All American Pipeline just the week before . To make the deal happen, ExxonMobil loaned the new entity 97 percent of the $643 million Sable paid Exxon, to be paid back over a five-year period at 10 percent interest. Even so, the deal will hit Exxon with a $2 billion loss. The Santa Ynez Unit is the last production node for Exxon in California.
