Judge Donna Geck issued an emergency temporary restraining order barring the Office of the State Fire Marshal from taking any of the steps necessary to process Sable Offshore’s application to restart the company’s hotly contested 125 miles of pipeline until July 18. During that time, no Fire Marshal inspectors can inspect the many pipeline repairs — about 120 — made by Sable work crews to determine if it passes regulatory muster, or any other work foundational to Sable’s restart request.
This emergency freeze was sought by attorneys representing the myriad of environmental organizations mobilized to stop Sable Offshore from restarting the 125-mile system of pipelines that’s been effectively shut down since May 19, 2015, when the pipeline ruptured due to chronic and pervasive corrosion, spilling 120,000 gallons of oil. Much of that made its way into the ocean by Refugio State Beach.
Sparking the environmentalists’ sense of urgency were three statements Sable filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission last week announcing that it had completed repairs and hydrostatic testing on the pipeline, and that it had resumed pumping oil from one of the company’s three platforms located in federal waters off the coast.
In its public statements, Sable pledged to have the oil flowing and the entire Santa Ynez Unit — the oil facilities that Sable purchased from Exxon two years ago — running by early summer. Further inciting the environmentalists’ outrage, Sable first issued a press release announcing it had resumed oil pumping on the tenth anniversary of the 2015 spill.
On July 18, Geck ruled, there will be a full-fledged evidentiary hearing on whether or not the Office of the Fire Marshal complied with state and federal environmental laws last December when it issued Sable a “waiver” that would allow the company to propose an alternate method of pipeline corrosion control. The original 1985 environmental impact report (EIR) called for a different method.
The environmental coalition opposing Sable — represented by the Environmental Defense Center and the Center for Biological Diversity — have filed legal papers claiming the fire marshal violated state and federal laws requiring that the waiver be subjected to public review and that a new EIR be prepared before a waiver could be issued. None of those have happened.
On Monday, they filed a petition for an emergency temporary restraining order to prevent the fire marshal from authorizing the restart of the plant until their petition to block the waiver in the first place could be adjudicated. Despite vigorous opposition from the state Attorney General — representing the Office of the State Fire Marshal — and from attorneys representing Sable, Geck quickly announced she would grant the restraining order.
She offered no explanation in court; the only issue discussed was on what date to schedule the hearing to hash out the major issues under dispute. Attorneys for Sable and the fire marshal took exception to the thousands of pages of sworn statements that their opponents had submitted and that they had only 24 hours in which to respond.
Sable attorneys claimed the arguments made by Linda Krop and Jeremy Frankel of the Environmental Defense Center were “premature” and “not ripe.” By this, they meant that the fire marshal had taken no action yet and was not likely to for another several weeks or months. Legally, they argued, Krop and Frankel should have waited until a restart permit had been issued before filing a restraining order to block execution of it.
The fire marshal had issued a sworn statement stating that Sable’s application for a restart permit had been deemed incomplete and that it would take the company “several weeks” to submit a complete application. After that, he said, it would take his office “several weeks” to decide.
Sable pointed out that Krop and Frankel had waited five months since the waiver had been granted. If it was such an urgent matter, why had they waited so long if it was an emergency?
Krop answered that it was Sable’s own words — issued last week — indicating that restart was imminent and that Sable had already resumed pumping. The real underlying issue is whether the alternate corrosion control methodology granted a waiver by the Office of the State Fire Marshal were safe enough to withstand the same corrosion pressures that caused the 2015 rupture.
Krop and Frankel included commentary from a pipeline safety consultant stating that the alternate methods proposed by Sable and approved by the fire marshal were flawed. Sable and the fire marshal have insisted that the pipeline safety precautions they have committed to far exceed anything currently required under state or federal law. To date, however, none of these arguments and assertions have been hashed out in public. The first time that will occur will be on July 18.
In a statement released the day after Judge Geck’s ruling, Sable Vice President of government relations Steve Rusch stated, “This court does not impeded Sable’s preparations for restarting the flow of oil critical to lowering California’s gas prices and stabilizing supply.” Rusch added that Sable is governed by the consent decree imposed upon the prior pipeline operator and the federal agency responsible for oil pipeline safety after the 2015 spill. That decree was signed off on by 10 state and federal oversight issues, Rusch added. “Sable is in full compliance with that consent decree and will seek to protect our rights and enforce the legal process.”
