[Updated: Wed., Dec. 17, 2025, 6:37pm]
For the second time in six weeks, the county supervisors voted to deny Sable Offshore’s application to transfer the title and permits to operate from Exxon Mobil. Sable, a new Houston-based oil company, purchased three offshore oil platforms, a processing and storage plant, and a 125-mile pipeline in February 2024 and now need the transfer documents to legally begin operations.
A staff report stated that “Sable has amassed a significant track record of systemic non-compliance,” demonstrating “… a lack of diligence and a pattern … of failing to notify regulatory agencies” of its proposed work. The supervisors found that the company repeatedly failed to obtain authorization before beginning the much-contested repair work on the badly corroded pipeline that ruptured in May 2015, resulting in a major oil spill in the waters along the Gaviota Coast.
The staff report accused Sable of ignoring regulatory directives, failing to provide accurate records to regulating agencies. This pattern of outright contempt prompted the supervisors to conclude that Sable lacked the “skills and training necessary to operate the permitted facility in compliance with all applicable county codes.”
In its two short years in existence, Sable has been fined $18 million by the California Coastal Commission for violating, among other things, two cease and desist orders for work on the pipeline until it secured a coastal development permit. It aroused the wrath of the California Attorney General for doing unpermitted repair work near coastal creeks and streams. And Santa Barbara’s District Attorney filed criminal charges against it for disregarding state environmental requirements.
Santa Barbara County is the only county on the planet with a law requiring that the transfer of a major oil operation be approved by county regulators. Enacted in the early 1990s, it was a time when large oil operators were selling to smaller companies — dismissively described as “fly-by-night” companies. The county feared that many of these companies lacked the resources to run a large industrial enterprise safely. Worse, they often did not have the financial wherewithal to clean up a spill, should one occur.
This marks the first time in county history that such an application has been rejected. Sable Offshore has always threatened to challenge the constitutionality of the ordinance in court, if the county denied the transfer. Considering that the law is untested, some supervisors who voted to block Sable remain uncertain what legal weight their decision will have.
At the very least, it will further fuel Sable’s efforts to secure federal offshore permits to bypass the pipeline altogether and move its oil — drilled from platforms in federal waters — via an oil treatment tanker also located in federal waters. What influence President Trump’s full-throated insistence on “energy dominance” will have on the situation has yet to be seen.
Even if Sable plays the tanker option, the Coastal Commission is required to determine if such a plan is consistent with state coastal policies. Also, the Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District must report on whether Sable’s offshore emissions will adversely affect the county’s air quality.
At the hearing, Sable packed the house with supporters, many of whom spoke eloquently about the company’s dedication to safety protocols. One argued that California oil policies put its economy at risk: The county would lose millions of dollars, school districts would suffer, and the state would have to import oil from third world countries where safety considerations were non-existent. Very few failed to mention that the same county planners who were now recommended denying Sable’s application, were the same ones who had written three previous reports saying just the opposite. Or as Supervisor Bob Nelson — who cast the sole vote in favor of the transfer to Sable — put it, “It’s political theater.”
Ironically, it would be Supervisor Steve Lavagnino — a historically vociferously pro-oil supervisor — now cast the deciding vote against Sable. “When you come to a tough decision, you either choose comfort or your conscience,” Lavagnino said. “Very rarely do you get to do both.” He would have loved to be able to vote for Sable. But given the company’s track record of contempt and non-compliance, he said to Sable representatives, “You just didn’t give me that opportunity.”
Supervisor Joan Hartmann Re-Recuses
Sable researched the matter after the November vote and discovered that the actual distance was much less. Sable attorneys then demanded that Hartmann recuse herself. Hartmann submitted the question to the FPPC late last week and early this Tuesday, the state agency concluded that the pipeline was too close for Hartmann to participate. For Sable, it was a pyric victory. Sable attorneys complained this week that Hartmann’s participation in November tainted the vote this week.
This week’s vote is the second one the supervisors have struggled over in the past six weeks. In the first hearing, the board voted 4-1 to deny Sable; this week, it was 3-1. Explaining the discrepancy between the two is that Supervisor Joan Hartmann was disqualified from voting by the Fair Political Practices because the Sable pipeline came within eight feet of her property in Buellton. Hartmann had consulted with the FPPC prior to the November vote to see if a conflict existed and had been cleared to participate. But then the FPPC relied upon a very informal map prepared by the County of Santa Barbara, which dramatically overstated the distance between the pipeline and Hartmann’s property line.
Complicating the whole can-she-or-can’t-she drama surrounding Hartmann, it should be noted that she recused herself — reportedly upon advice of county counsel — from any board participation on Sable pipeline matters even before Sable bought the pipeline and the rest of the Santa Ynez Unit from Sable’s predecessor, ExxonMobil.
Feds Assert Jurisdiction over Sable’s Pipeline, Take Restart Authority Away from State
For those endowed with a perverse appetite for complex but important minutiae, it should be noted that this Wednesday, the federal pipeline safety oversight regulatory agency notified Sable Offshore that the agency concurred with Sable’s contention that the pipeline in dispute is, in fact, an interstate pipeline, not an intrastate pipeline. For most people, that’s a distinction without meaning, but for Sable Offshore, it may be a distinction worth several billion dollars.
As an interstate pipeline, Sable and its pipeline would fall under the jurisdiction of the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, better known as PHMSA. If that decision holds, that means, the last word on Sable’s pipeline restart plans no longer resides with the Office of the State Fire Marshall, which had notified Sable a few months ago that the repairs Sable had conducted on its pipeline did not conform to the Fire Marshal’s safety standards. The company’s restart application, the Fire Marshal stated, would have to wait until those repairs were done with margins of error that were big enough to meet the Fire Marshal’s specifications.
The operating presumption is that Sable will enjoy much smoother sailing under the regulatory auspices of a federal agency during the oil-friendly administration of Donald Trump. Based on the difficulty Congressmember Salud Carbajal’s office has experienced getting information out of PHMSA about Sable’s application of an interstate pipeline designation, that presumption might carry water.
The Environmental Defense Center says there are still hurdles Sable must clear to get the green light to restart Exxon’s old operations — it still needs a clearance from the State Parks Department so it can conduct the corrosion repairs needed for four mile stretch of pipeline along the coast. But Sable has been framing the issue as one of national security, and should the Trump administration echo that argument, it’s likely that the federal government might take some actions to preempt whatever limited state authority remains.
The irony here, of course, is that PHMSA had regulatory oversight of the pipeline when the pipeline ruptured. Adding to the irony, PHMSA at that time lacked the personnel needed to conduct the oversight and enforcement actions necessary, so it farmed that work out to the state Fire Marshal. If the past is prologue here, PHMSA might well delegate its jurisdictional oversight authority to the very state agency whose jurisdiction it is now usurping.
Whatever happens, the county supervisors will be forced to proceed with one less voice — that of Supervisor Joan Hartmann — able to participate in the inevitably complex, intense, and highly fraught deliberation, discussions, and closed-door discussions about litigation real and imminent.
Editor’s Note: This story was updated to add new sections on Supervisor Joan Hartmann’s recusal and the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration asserting jurisdiction over Sable’s pipeline.
