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Santa Barbara Residents Rally to Stop Restart of Refugio Beach Oil Spill Pipeline [1]
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Date: 2025-03-05
On Dec. 19, the company announced to investors that the California Office of the State Fire Marshal has waived federally required anti-corrosion measures for the Las Flores pipeline system, the Center for Biological Diversity reported.
“The state waivers represent a significant milestone achievement in satisfying the requirements of the federal court ordered consent decree, which includes the granting of these waivers by the OSFM as a condition for restarting the Pipeline,” the announcement claims.
Sable said it expected to begin hydrotesting the Pipeline in January 2025 in advance of a potential restart of production from the Santa Ynez Unit offshore platforms and the associated Las Flores Canyon processing facilities in the first quarter of 2025.
The system has been shut down since May 2015, when a badly corroded pipeline owned by the Plains All American Corporation ruptured and released about 450,000 gallons of oil near Refugio State Beach in Santa Barbara County, causing the closure of public beaches and recreational and commercial fishing for months.
“The state waiver is a major step toward Sable Offshore Corp. restarting oil production from the Santa Ynez Unit’s three offshore oil platforms and transporting that oil through pipelines traversing state waters and three California counties,” according to a statement from the Center for Biological Diversity.
“Restarting these decades-old defective pipelines is a recipe for disaster,” said Julie Teel Simmonds, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Shame on California’s fire marshal for waiving important federal safety rules and doing it all behind closed doors without any environmental review. There are tremendous environmental and safety risks to restarting these zombie pipelines and people have a right to be informed about every single step of this process.”
Simmons said federal safety standards require pipelines to be equipped with anti-corrosion measures called cathodic protections. “Inherent design flaws in the Las Flores pipeline system prevent these critical protections from functioning as they should, heightening the risk of a spill. Ineffective cathodic protection was the direct cause of the 2015 oil spill,” she added.
Under federal law, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has 60 days to object to the waiver, noted Simmons. And under the Trump Administration an objection to the waiver is unlikely, considering the regime’s current campaign to “Drill, baby, drill.:
“In late September the California Coastal Commission cited Sable for violating the law by conducting unpermitted construction work to restart the pipeline,” said Simmons. “The commission issued a second notice a few days later when construction had not stopped, and issued a cease and desist order in November.”
The Refugio spill devastated 150 miles of the California coast, polluting thousands of acres of shoreline and habitat, killing hundreds of marine mammals and birds, shutting down recreational and commercial fisheries for months and fouling four marine protected areas created under the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative.
Federal judge rules that two groups can add new legal claims in lawsuit
More recently, a federal judge ruled in late January that the Center and Wishtoyo Foundation can add new legal claims in their case filed in June 2024 challenging the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement’s unlawful extension of several offshore oil and gas leases in the Santa Barbara Channel.
“The new claims challenge the bureau’s rubber-stamping of two permits that help facilitate restarting oil and gas production at the Santa Ynez Unit. The agency issued the permits in September 2024 within four days of receiving the applications from Sable Offshore Corp. Its approval relied on an environmental analysis completed 40 years ago,” the Center wrote.
“It’s appalling that the federal government wants to greenlight risky offshore oil drilling based on information that’s four decades old,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center. “It’s time to phase out offshore oil drilling and fossil fuels, not revive creaky, long-dormant operations. Federal agencies shouldn’t take any action without carefully examining the numerous harms these operations pose to people, wildlife and the ocean environment. We look forward to presenting our arguments to the court.”
The former holder of the leases, ExxonMobil, sold the Santa Ynez Unit and its associated infrastructure to Sable in 2024. Before the spill, oil and gas production had been occurring since April 1981. The federal government last completed an environmental analysis on the harms from this drilling project in 1984, according to Monsell.
“The 2024 lawsuit says BSEE violated the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and the National Environmental Policy Act when it extended the leases. The new claims also say the agency’s issuance of the permits and failure to conduct an updated environmental review violated the National Environmental Policy Act,” the groups wrote.
The groups are asking the court to “declare the agency’s actions unlawful, reject the lease extensions and drilling permits, and prohibit the agency from issuing any other permits that facilitate restarting the Santa Ynez Unit unless and until it complies with the law.”
The history of the Refugio Oil Spill and its aftermath is a sordid tale of corporate greed, corruption, overt conflicts of interest, regulatory capture and appalling judicial leniency. Here’s a summary of some of the highlights of my reporting:
Company behind oil spill slapped on the wrist
Restoration and compensation for the spill cost hundreds of millions of dollars and the spill resulted in a felony conviction for the pipeline’s former owner, Plains All American Pipeline.
Yet on April 25, 2019, Santa Barbara Superior Court Judge James Herman sentenced Plains All American to pay $3,347,650 in total fines and penalty assessments for the massive 2015 Refugio Oil Spill — a mere “slap on the wrist.”
Santa Barbara County District Attorney Joyce E. Dudley and environmental groups were disappointed at the time that the Judge did not grant the DA’s request to impose a larger fine of $1.2 billion on the company.
“While the Court made findings including that Plains knew or should have known their pipeline would rupture, stating that ‘[i]t was not a matter of if, but a matter of when,’ Judge Herman denied the People’s request to impose probation and for a significantly larger fine,” according to a statement from the DA’s Office.
“This assault on our community,” said Dudley, “correctly resulted in a historic felony conviction as a result of the Herculean efforts of Deputy District Attorney Kevin Weichbrod and the extraordinary team of Deputy Attorney Generals led by Brett Morris. Still, without the insight, fortitude and hard work of our jury, this success could have evaded our community.”
The story behind the story: Oil lobbyist chaired marine protected areas panel
But the story behind the spill goes much deeper. In one of the most bizarre examples of regulatory capture that the mainstream and so-called “alternative” media refused to report on, the pipeline spill fouled four “marine protected areas” created under the controversial Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative.
In a scenario that could only happen in the faux “green” state of California, Catherine Reheis-Boyd, the President of the Western States Petroleum Association, chaired the MLPA Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force to create “marine protected areas” in Southern California at the same time that her organization was a lobbyist for Plains All American.
She also served on the task forces for the Central Coast, North Central Coast, and North Coast from 2004 to 2012, as well as on a federal marine protected areas panel from 2003 to 2014. She served on these panels as the oil industry was fracking in existing leases off the Southern California Coast.
"Plains All American, the owner of the pipeline, is a member of the Western States Petroleum Association," proudly proclaimed Catherine Reheis-Boyd, President of the Western States Petroleum Association (WSPA), in her blog post responding to the 2015 spill at the time.
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