Oil Fight Not over as Generations of Santa Barbarans Gather for Vigil 

About 100 people gathered Thursday evening at the Dolphin Fountain near Stearns Wharf, many wearing red T-shirts reading “Don’t Enable Sable,” for a vigil responding to the abrupt restart of offshore oil transport along the Santa Barbara coast. 

The event was organized six days after President Donald Trump invoked the Cold War–era Defense Production Act — a federal law allowing the government to compel private industry to meet national resource needs — allowing Houston-based Sable Offshore Corp. to restart oil flow through pipelines crossing Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, and Kern counties. The order followed years of protests, litigation, and state enforcement actions that kept the company’s offshore pipeline network dormant after a ruptured line caused a major spill in 2015.

“This is not over,” said Alex Katz, executive director of the Environmental Defense Center, calling the federal intervention an “extraordinary” step benefiting a company that has faced numerous lawsuits tied to environmental compliance. “We will continue fighting until we win.”

EDC Chief Counsel Linda Krop further emphasized the multiple legal challenges underway at the county, state, and federal levels, grounded in coastal protections enacted after the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill.

In an interview with Joan, a UCSB alumna who attended with her daughter, she recalled standing on Stearns Wharf nearly six decades prior as a university student in the aftermath of that spill. “We’ve been fighting this ever since,” she said.

Assemblymember Gregg Hart told attendees the federal action represents “another barrier” but not a final outcome. “There are still laws in this country,” he said, arguing that the Defense Production Act has “never” been applied in disputes involving environmental permitting.

County Supervisor Joan Hartmann, who attended with her young grandson, put the pipeline fight in a broader context of climate risks. “We know what climate change is bringing to our county and to our planet,” she said, citing record heat, wildfire threats, and sea-level rise. “We will not stand for it — not on our coast, not here, not now.”

Speakers and vigil organizers spanned generations, from the Society of Fearless Grandmothers to the UC Santa Barbara Environmental Affairs Board, and the Santa Barbara High School Environmental Club. At the edge of the crowd, in front of his mother, stood a little boy no older than four. With a red shirt that fell past his knees, he gripped  a protest sign bigger than himself: “NO RESTART FOR FAILED PIPELINE.”

About a decade older, Santa Barbara High School student Ethan Maday — one of the vigil’s organizers — delivered what became one of the evening’s most pointed appeals. He said restarting the pipeline would do little to affect gas prices but carried lasting consequences for younger generations.

“This isn’t a fight about gas prices,” he said. “It’s a fight for tomorrow — for the day after tomorrow — and for my future children.”