White House Officials Defend Offshore Oil’s  Restart

Two of President Donald Trump’s head honchos, Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, visited Santa Barbara on Friday to celebrate the recent restart of Sable Offshore’s oil production in the county.  

After an aerial tour of the company’s offshore oil infrastructure, they arrived, via helicopter, at Sable’s huge processing plant tucked into Las Flores Canyon near Goleta for a press conference where they, along with Sable’s CEO James Flores, aggressively defended Wright’s recent order to restart the legally embattled pipeline by overriding California’s determination that the company had not yet met the state’s safety standards.

The plant where the conference occurred was the same one that was shut down 10 years ago after the same pipeline caused a massive spill along the Gaviota Coast. Despite facing multiple legal roadblocks from the state — which Sable is still grappling with — Sable was allowed to restart production at its offshore wells, processing plant, and pipelines. Wright ordered it to do so shortly after the U.S and Israel began bombing Iran by citing the Defense Production Act (DPA) of 1950 on national security grounds.

Sable CEO James Flores opened up the conference, claiming that Sable oil will fuel 72 million cars per year, before Secretary Wright took to the podium. He began with criticism of California Governor Gavin Newsom, accusing him of prioritizing “fashionable” policies over energy production. He emphasized that California imports foreign oil from the Middle East. Last year, 61 percent of the state’s oil was imported. 

“Gavin Newsom and too many other California pop politicians want to be in fashion with the Chardonnay set in hoity-toity Marin County,” he said. “It’s very fashionable to be adamantly against common sense, to say ‘No, we should not produce existing oil in California through existing infrastructures. No, instead we prefer to import that oil from Iraq and Indonesia and Ecuador and from abroad.’” 

He framed the use of the Defense Production Act to allow Sable to circumvent state authority in the restart of Sable’s pipelines as a result of the state forcing the federal government’s hand. California has 30 military facilities, and is a launching pad for the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, he noted. 

Wright called the war in Iran a “critical mission,” and “we pay a price for that through temporarily higher prices …. We certainly are using all the federal authorities we have to get this back going on,” Wright said. “We did need to use the Defense Production Act as that extra step, but I think that President Trump and all of us are 100 percent justified in doing that.” 

“We’re the largest global exporter of oil last month — U.S. number one, Russia number two, Saudi Arabia number three, but yet we’re standing here at a state, our largest state, our most military-intensive state, and two thirds of the oil is imported from distant places overseas,” he continued. “Unacceptable.”

When asked if Sable is providing any oil to the Department of Defense or defense contractors, Flores replied that they sell it to Chevron. “We don’t know where Chevron sells — it sells all the jet fuel to LAX and sells gasoline throughout,” he said. “So Chevron’s our buyer …. If the department wants our oil, they just come ask, and we have to give it to them by rule of law,” Flores said. 

Wright claimed Trump is “all about energy addition and energy dominance,” while California is about “energy subtraction and energy submission.” 

Secretary Burgum — who was wearing a Sable Offshore shirt with his name embroidered on it — claimed that with Sable on the market, the cost of fuel is dropping. He called Sable a “part of the solution.”

When questioned about the risk of the administration’s reliance on fossil fuels possibly creating stranded assets, such as eliminating many clean energy projects, Burgum, instead, criticized those once federally subsidized projects as “intermittent and unreliable.”

“I mean, all of those things were bad economically, but they didn’t turn the dial,” Burgum said. Burgum spoke about electricity needs to power artificial intelligence in the state.  

Despite a number of lawsuits — filed by both state and environmental groups — that seek to prevent Sable from producing oil and pumping it across the California coast without state authorization, Sable argues that with federal backing, it does not need state permission to operate. 

However, the company is still pursuing a backup plan of shipping the oil straight from federal waters via tankers, removing it from California jurisdiction, Flores said on Friday. 

“We have a beautiful pipeline on shore that we’ve been producing through that the DPA allows us to produce through, and it’s working fantastic, but as an alternative, if that market goes away or the pipeline becomes constrained with not enough capacity, then we have a marine option,” Flores said. 

Wright added, “So you sell the oil to Asia instead of Californian Americans. That’s not a problem for Sable, but probably better for our country to have those resources go into our most expensive energy state and help give some price relief here.”

Sable Offshore said in March that Platform Harmony is producing about 22,000 gross barrels of oil per day and Platform Heritage would generate a total rate of more than 30,000 gross barrels of oil per day. Once Platform Hondo is back online, expected sometime this summer, it is expected to produce more than 10,000 barrels per day, the company said. 

Asked about the risk of an oil spill from the same pipeline that ruptured in 2015 and caused the massive Refugio Oil Spill along the Gaviota Coast, Flores said the company is “very conscious about the environment” and safety “is our number one priority.” He went as far as to claim “we’re all environmentalists,” and he expects to be “vindicated in court by all the accusations.”  

“Sable is California,” Flores said. “We’re going to be here forever.”

Environmental Pushback

 In response to Friday morning’s press conference, 100 people gathered in front of the Community Environmental Council in the afternoon to protest the restarting of Sable’s oil operation 

“The promise that they made, that their additional production is going to benefit Californians, is a lie,” said Assemblymember Gregg Hart. “Oil that’s produced in California is sold at global prices. We don’t get any discount. We don’t get any benefit, and we bear all the risk environmentally to our and to our economy from a potential spill.”

Linda Krop, chief counsel of the Environmental Defense Center (EDC), said that they obtained an injunction in Santa Barbara County Superior Court last July prohibiting Sable from restarting the pipeline, but Sable has not complied,  and instead sought to terminate the injunction. The judge repeatedly denied Sable’s requests.

“So what did Sable do? Did they comply? No, they moved the case to federal court,” Krop said. 

She said the EDC has a hearing on Monday to try to move the case back to Santa Barbara Superior Court, as they were “on the eve of having a contempt hearing because Sable is violating a court injunction.” 

Other speakers noted the recently launched congressional inquiries into possible backdoor communications — accompanied by campaign donations — between Sable CEO James Flores and President Donald Trump. 

A representative from Congressmember Salud Carbajal’s office delivered a statement on his behalf. He called the morning press conference a “stunt” and another instance “of the Trump administration playing cheerleader for the Sable oil company.” 

“Our community has been abundantly clear on where we stand. We do not want more offshore oil production. I will continue to fight this federal overreach in congress, and I will stand with our local partners as they pursue every legal action available.”