California’s refusal to permit a simple onshore pipeline for the Sable offshore oil project has morphed into an absurd spectacle.
Instead of a straightforward, cost-effective inland connection, operators are now forced to consider a Floating Production Storage and Offloading unit (an FPSO) to process and shuttle crude at sea. This detour exemplifies the empty promise of NIMBYism: campaigning to “protect” the environment at home while outsourcing real destruction and real costs to distant places.
Gas prices here tell the story. Californians pay 70 percent more for gas than people in Texas.
Meanwhile, four major California refineries are shuttering, which will make that multiple go even higher. It’s been stated by some experts if things don’t change, Californians will be paying north of $6/gallon.
Here’s the kicker: the most climate-friendly, lowest-carbon oil available to Californians sits right off our coast. Every barrel from the Sable project is produced under the world’s toughest safety and environmental standards, continuous emissions monitoring, rigorous spill-prevention plans, and top-tier worker training. Yet local resistance to a land-based pipeline scuttles this option. The result? We choke off our own responsibly produced fuel and double down on imports that devastate rainforests and imperil communities.
Meanwhile, Ecuador supplies a large share of our imported crude, and the toll on the Amazon is staggering. Since the 1970s, oil development in Ecuador has wiped out more than 1.6 million acres of primary rainforest for drilling sites, roads, and support facilities.
Just within a 30-mile radius of the Lago Agrio fields, where a significant portion of our imports originates, over 370,000 acres of intact forest have vanished in the past two decades. These forests aren’t just trees; they’re irreplaceable carbon sinks, biodiversity hotspots, and the ancestral lands of Indigenous peoples.
It’s been stated that California is responsible for 50 percent of the oil related deforestation in Ecuador as the largest single importer of Rainforest oil. Oil-driven deforestation releases massive CO₂ emissions, fragments wildlife habitat, and leaves toxic legacies. Yet, we ignore this information and are trying to block a source of oil that causes none of the above.
Add in the fact the rest of the oil that is imported comes from other countries such as Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE which all have terrible human rights issues.
From an energy security perspective, domestic production is a no-brainer. It shields us from global supply shocks, price spikes triggered by geopolitical events, and natural disasters that can knock out foreign production. Yet by refusing to build Sable’s Oil, which is already drilled and ready to go, we surrender that stability in favor of riskier, dirtier, and more expensive imports.
The path forward is clear: Ditch the politics, embrace the pragmatism. And stop pretending that Sable Offshore is the problem when we are directly supporting the destruction of the Amazon in its place.
