‘PATENTLY INPLAUSIBLE’: I want to say it was 4:32 this Tuesday afternoon when I got to witness a head-on collision between the past and the future, both driving at warp speed. It was weirdly wonderful.
I was watching the Board of Supervisors, which finally — after six long years of studies, reports, throat clearing, and all the usual inexplicable delays — flipped the switch to allow the birth of a brand-new utility-scale solar power industry in Santa Barbara County. About time.
In California, Big Solar is, well, really big. In fact, it’s the biggest in the country. In fact, we produce so much more solar juice here than we can consume that we have to pay other states to take our surplus. But in Santa Barbara County, where we endlessly pat ourselves on the back for being the birthplace of the environmental movement, we have been conspicuous by our absence. Our zoning codes have not allowed for the existence of utility-scale solar except for a remote 600-acre outpost of sanity in the high desert wilds of the Cuyama Valley. No champagne corks were flying in the supervisors’ chambers, so sadly, no one had to duck. Lots of T’s have yet to be crossed, many I’s to be dotted. But it’s coming.
As an opening salvo, 10,000 acres of large-scale solar development on ag land will now be allowed. Yet to be hashed out is how much space to allow free-standing lithium-ion electric battery facilities where all that excess energy can be stored until needed. And what safety measures should be required. Up in North County, where most of this will likely take place, there’s abiding concern about lithium-ion fires — “Remember Moss Landing” being the battle cry.
In the middle of all this, I got an email containing Federal Judge Dolly F. Gee’s final ruling about the lawsuit filed by Sable Offshore and Exxon against the County of S.B. The oil companies had alleged an unconstitutional taking of their property rights. Although the companies had not specified a dollar amount in their pleadings, word on the street was that hundreds of millions of county dollars could be stake.
Simply put, Judge Gee told Sable and Exxon to go pound sand. Sable, she ruled, had confused its “unilateral desire” and “unilateral expectations” for a valid legal claim. The company’s arguments were so incurably defective, the judge concluded, that she won’t waste her time by letting the company try to amend their pleadings. The facts surrounding Exxon are, however, different, and the judge allowed that she will allow Exxon to file an amended complaint. In other words, it ain’t remotely over.
At issue is the county supervisors’ 3-1 refusal last December to approve the transfer of title and permits from Exxon for its three offshore platforms, three oil pipelines, and Gaviota’s Las Flores Canyon processing plant to Sable. It’s like trying to buy a used car but not getting the pink slip. In this case, the county is relying on a law that exists only here. Known as 25B, this law, passed in 2001, gives the county authority to approve the transfer of operational assets from one oil company to another.
The ordinance was adopted at a time when Big Oil was selling out to smaller operators with less money and experience. Fly-by-nighters, in other words. If there was a mess, the county wanted to ensure there was someone on the hook with pockets deep enough to clean it up — preferably with the expertise to prevent it happening in the first place. Santa Barbara, apparently, is the only place on the planet with such safeguard. The proposed transfer from Exxon to Sable marks the only time when the county has said no.
All this was kind of historic. It was definitely unique. And it is hugely untested. Understandably, Sable and Exxon tried to test it. They didn’t get very far with Judge Dolly Gee. They also didn’t get far against the attorneys representing the county or the Environmental Defense Center. Judge Gee ruled the county was legally endowed with the police powers to protect its residents from slipshod operators and that the supervisors’ “no” vote fell well within their discretionary authority.
Sable was never endowed with any vested rights that could have been trampled, she argued, because the transfer of those rights was never transferred. It doesn’t automatically go with the bill of sale. Exxon, of all people, she ruled, should have known better. After all, in 2023, when Exxon bought the pipeline from Plains, all the usual environmental suspects came out of the woodwork to make all the usual environmental arguments against allowing the transfer. When the planning commissioners tried to sort it out, they voted to allow Exxon to transfer the title.
The world’s largest oil company should not have been surprised to learn there would be a fight. Because Exxon did still does have vested rights to the plant — and is still on the hook for final decommissioning and cleanup of the plant — the judge granted the company “leave to amend” its complaint.
But Judge Gee had zero patience with Sable’s argument that the supervisors’ vote to deny transfer of permits in December of 2025 was “a tool to frustrate Sable’s compliance with the Defense Production Order” to begin production issued in March 2026 by Secretary of Energy Chris Wright, and “to stand as an obstacle to the Executive Branch,” which clearly supports Sable. “As a matter of logic, it is patently implausible that the board denied the final development permit applications in order to frustrate an order that did not exist at the time of its decision.”
The lawsuit remains very much in its infancy. While the judge rejected all the claims against the county, she is allowing Exxon and Sable to amend some, but not all of them. But as rulings go, it seems like a big one.
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