Two of President Donald Trump’s head honchos, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, visited Santa Barbara on Friday to celebrate the recent restart of Sable Offshore’s oil production in the county.
After an aerial tour of the company’s offshore oil infrastructure, they arrived, via helicopter, at Sable’s huge processing plant tucked into Las Flores Canyon near Goleta for a press conference where they, along with Sable’s CEO James Flores, aggressively defended Wright’s recent order to restart the legally embattled pipeline by overriding California’s determination that the company had not yet met the state’s safety standards.
The plant where the conference occurred was the same one that was shut down 10 years ago after the same pipeline caused a massive spill along the Gaviota Coast. Despite facing multiple legal roadblocks from the state — which Sable is still grappling with — Sable was allowed to restart production at its offshore wells, processing plant, and pipelines. Wright ordered it to do so shortly after the U.S and Israel began bombing Iran by citing the Defense Production Act (DPA) of 1950 on national security grounds.