California Judge Rejects Sable’s Motion to Lift Injunction

Football, they say, is a game of inches, but oil development off the coast of Santa Barbara is played out on an infinitely tighter field. Sable Offshore found this out the hard way on Friday morning, February 27, in the courtroom of Judge Donna Geck.

Geck, the famously no-nonsense Superior Court judge, upheld the restraining order she first imposed on Sable last summer. That order blocked the company from restarting production and pumping oil through the company’s two hotly contested pipelines.

While the details of Geck’s decision might seem mere procedural hair-splitting, the implications are dramatic. Had Geck ruled to lift the ban, Sable Offshore would have effectively been given the green light to begin production immediately. But for those following the Sable soap opera, it seems it’s never over until it’s over.

At least for the next four months, the embattled oil company’s path forward would appear blocked.

The outstanding issue that remains unresolved is whether the state government or the federal government has the last word over Sable’s bitterly fought plans to restart what formerly was the ExxonMobil oil and gas plant up the Gaviota Coast known as Los Flores Canyon.

Sable and the federal government — aggressively pro-oil with Trump in the White House — are asserting that the federal government — in the form of the Petroleum and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) — has the final decision.

Opposing the federal government’s position are California’s attorney general and the state fire marshal, as well as the Environmental Defense Center (EDC) and the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD). These groups cite as legally binding the out-of-court legal settlement of 2020 that gave California’s fire marshal ultimate control over Sable’s restart dreams.

In court Friday, Sable attorney Jeffrey Dintzer argued that PHMSA had the exclusive say, since it agreed, on December 17, to Sable’s request that the pipelines fell under federal jurisdiction. Because of that, he argued, neither the state fire marshal nor Judge Geck, for that matter, had any jurisdiction over Sable’s quest to restart.

“The court has no legal authority whatsoever,” Dintzer told Geck. Only federal judges in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal, he insisted, had standing to render an opinion. 

Dintzer based his position on PHMSA’s December decree that described the Sable pipeline as “interstate” — not “intrastate.” That gave the federal government — and not the state — jurisdiction.

Just a few days after that finding, the federal pipeline safety administration issued Sable an emergency restart permit allowing it to begin pumping oil through the contested pipelines. It was those pipelines that, ten years ago ruptured, spilling more than 142,000 gallons of oil along the Gaviota Coast, a disaster that brought all offshore oil development there to a screeching halt.

Because of all this, Dintzer insisted, Geck needed to lift her injunction. 

That injunction required — and still requires — the company to secure all necessary permits from all state agencies with any oversight authority. In addition, it requires Sable to wait ten days after that condition has been satisfied before reactivating the pipeline. This is to allow time for all interested agencies and parties to be given adequate notice to file any challenges and proposed modifications to pipeline safety precautions.

Dintzer made his case with an understandable sense of urgency. In the world of oil development, time is money, and the longer court battles drag on, the more money the company hemorrhages. Dintzer knew he was spitting in the wind, however. The day before, Judge Geck had issued her tentative ruling upholding her injunction.

“At least for the next four months, the embattled oil company’s path forward would appear blocked.”

—Nick Welsh

Dintzer responded by filing the legal equivalent of a Hail Mary pass. At 2 p.m. on Thursday afternoon, he filed legal papers renouncing the preliminary waivers that the state fire marshal’s office had already issued Sable. It was, undeniably, a dramatic gesture. If the state government lacked any jurisdiction, then permits issued by state agencies would be legally meaningless.

But the state attorney general’s lawyer objected, citing that, by submitting his filing just a few business hours before Friday’’s scheduled hearing, Dintzer had done so in “an untimely fashion.” Attorneys for the Environmental Defense Center and the Center for Biological Diversity supported this position, with EDC’s attorney Linda Krop arguing that  the judge should not consider Dintzer’s filing.

All arguments from both sides were notably brief. Judge Geck’s ruling was equally brief. “I haven’t considered it,” she said, speaking of Dintzer’s filing, “and I’m not going to.”

Judge Geck noted that it was a “Federal Consent decree” — signed by federal and state regulatory agencies in the aftermath of the 2015 oil spill that lead to the shut down of these pipelines. That consent degree is a legally binding court document that explicitly gave the Office of the State Fire Marshal the power to make the final restart decision.

“The court is not persuaded”, Geck wrote, ”that administrative actions taken by PHMSA necessarily eliminates OSFM participation in the restart process.” 

The matter is hardly resolved, however. The way Geck left it, Sable still has a path forward, just a daunting one. Getting the state agencies to sign off that Sable has completed all requirements will not be easy considering Sable’s time-is-money constraints.

In the meanwhile there will be more court wrangling: Judge Geck scheduled a follow up court hearing for June 27.  Sometime in July, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeal is scheduled to hold its hearing on whether the PHMSA ruling that the federal government was legally entitled to take jurisdictional authority out of the hands of the State Fire Marshal was legal or not.

So the Sable saga continues.