Sable Offshore’s convoluted saga to restart ExxonMobil’s oil plant along the Gaviota Coast — shut down the past 10 years by an oil spill sprung from a ruptured pipeline running along that stretch of waterfront — just got significantly more challenging for the oil company and even more convoluted.
Late Saturday night, the state legislature passed an emergency oil bill, ramrodded through both houses by Governor Gavin Newsom — wary of potential price spikes at the pump — to ease environmental regulations hampering oil development in Kern County. But in exchange, the governor appears to have tossed Sable Offshore under the bus, at least partially, by including language from bills introduced separately by Santa Barbara’s representatives in Sacramento, State Senator Monique Limón and Assemblymember Gregg Hart, both designed to heighten the regulatory hurdles the Houston-based oil company must clear and provide additional oversight and safety measures sought by their environmentally minded political base.
Hart’s language would make Sable seek and secure a conditional development permit from the California Coastal Commission to get a restart permit for the company’s plant, pipeline, and three offshore oil platforms. Sable and the Coastal Commission have been locked in a bitter dispute over the commission’s jurisdiction. The commission fined Sable $18 million last year for not complying with several cease-and-desist orders on repair work the company was then conducting on Exxon’s former — and badly corroded — pipeline.