November 25th’s opinion piece (“History Is Unfortunately About to Repeat Itself”) urges the county to choose the lesser of two evils when it comes to the Sable Offshore oil matter: Transfer permits to reopen the pipeline or face a never-ending barrage of oil tankers in the channel. But it’s a false binary, based on the same flawed logic that the oil industry is infamous for pushing.
The reality is that the Offshore Storage and Treatment Facility (OSTF) option is a fantasy and always has been. It will cost $600 million to $1.2 billion, which would be piled onto Sable’s existing liabilities of $1 billion including the loan it owes Exxon. Not to mention its growing debts in servicing and repairing its sole asset, the Santa Ynez Unit ($36 million in cash per month, and counting). All this against only $41 million in cash on hand, according to its latest securities filings.
The kicker is that there currently are no new OSTFs on the global market. Converting an oil vessel to an OSTF, which Sable has hinted it may do, would take upwards of three years to secure.
Let’s be honest here: This is not a financially stable company to begin with, let alone one that can take on a new massive loan for a product it can’t even get for three years. I urge our leaders to stick to their principles — and to common sense — and shut down Sable once and for all.
