The warfare between President Donald Trump and the state government of California over the fate of Sable Offshore’s increasingly embattled oil plans for the Gaviota Coast just escalated. California Parks and Recreation department issued the Houston-based oil company a sternly written letter demanding Sable remove all four miles of its pipeline from Gaviota State Park or else. The “or else” was not specifically described in the letter, signed by State Parks Chief Counsel Tara Lynch on Saturday, March 14, but the message was unequivocal: The four-mile easement for the stretch of Sable pipeline that runs through Gaviota State Park expired in 2016. The company, Lynch’s letter stated, has since violated the terms and conditions agreed to when the easement — and the many subsequent one-year extensions — were first signed.
The Parks department’s action comes just one day after Secretary of Energy Chris Wright issued a federal order allowing Sable’s Santa Ynez Unit to begin oil production, permitting the crude oil to move through the company’s pipeline. That action, in the annals of California oil development, marks an unprecedented exertion of federal power over the express will of state government.
In so doing, Energy Secretary Wright was acting at the behest of President Trump to break a legal and regulatory log jam that has held up Sable’s production plans for about two years. Wright invoked the Defense Authorization Act, a bill adopted in 1950 empowering the president to ensure the nation’s industrial resources are maintained in sufficient supply for if and when national security needs might arise. In that bill, national security is left much to the president to define as he sees fit, and since 1950, many presidents have defined it in different ways. One president, for example, used it to break a steel workers strike; another to promote green energy infrastructure. Trump and Biden both invoked it during the COVID crisis to address supply chain problems.
Late Friday afternoon — Friday the 13th — Energy Secretary Wright invoked the Defense Production Act to greenlight production and pumping at Sable’s Santa Ynez Unit, a massive industrial facility up the coast. Sable purchased the Unit from Exxon a little more than two years ago. Wright cited national security concerns, arguing that Sable’s productive capacity — about 55,000 barrels a day — would help maintain fuel supplies for the many military bases located along California’s coast. Wright also made a few barbed remarks castigating California’s energy policies as self-destructively short-sighted.
The Santa Ynez Unit — three offshore oil platforms coupled with the onshore industrial plant and a long stretch of pipeline — has sat idle since the Refugio oil spill of 2015 when the pipeline ruptured resulting in a 142,000 gallon oil spill, much of which crossed the freeway and got into the ocean. The pipeline company at the time of the spill — Plains All American — was found guilty of criminal negligence by a Santa Barbara jury and the company has reportedly paid in excess of $800 million in fines and legal settlements since. Not only did the 2015 spill shut down Exxon, but it shut down the other two oil companies operating along the Gaviota Coast as well, essentially accomplishing in one fell swoop what environmental opponents of offshore oil production could only dream of.
“This letter demands immediate removal of the pipeline on State Parks property pursuant to Section 8 of the Expired Easement,” wrote State Parks Chief Counsel Lynch. “State Parks has determined that due to Sable’s excessive drain on state resources and incompatibility of their project unit, State Parks will not be granting Sable an easement to continue to use Gaviota State Park for its oil pipeline operations.” If Sable were to change its ways and secure the necessary permits from the necessary state agencies first, it would reconsider. “If Sable does not formally respond within ten days with plans for removal of the pipeline segment within Gaviota State Park, State Parks will pursue legal action to defend the state’s property rights, and State Parks reserves the right to take all appropriate legal actions in the interim.
The easement is necessary for Sable to dig up stretches of pipeline buried underground in the Gaviota State Park property that have shown signs of such significant corrosion that they need to be dug up, repaired, and reburied. Such digs are not casual undertakings and, given that the pipeline crosses many creeks and streams that feed into the ocean, it can be of some environmental sensitivity as well. For example, four new species native to this terrain have been added to the federally endangered species list in the decades since the pipeline was first installed.
Sable has insisted its repair work didn’t need any additional permits and proceeded with major excavation over the objections of multiple state agencies. The California Coastal Commission issued two cease and desist letters, but those did not deter Sable’s repair crews from continuing the work. For this, the commission fined Sable $18 million.
This issue has been hashed out in many courtrooms, most notably that of Santa Barbara Superior Judge Thomas Anderle. Sable argued that pipeline repair was pre-permitted in a permit issued by the County of Santa Barbara in the early 1980s. The County of Santa Barbara wrote a letter to this effect in November 2024. Anderle was not persuaded, noting that the magnitude of impact caused by 122 pipeline repair jobs undertaken at about the same time was altogether more significant than the routine pipeline patch jobs envisioned by the county’s initial permit.
All this, however, is just so much legalistic hair splitting when placed in the context of the naked power struggle now pitting President Trump against California Governor Gavin Newsom against the backdrop of a spiraling global energy crisis precipitated by the attack on Iran launched two weeks ago by Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
