Precarious permits: Sable awaits Santa Barbara County’s decision on whether it can take over operator permits from ExxonMobil

About a month after Santa Barbara County supervisors voted 2-2 on the appeal to Sable Offshore Corporation’s permit transfer application, the county is still trying to decide what it means. 

“We are still considering the issue internally, and I do not have an update on our final determination yet,” county Energy, Minerals, and Compliance Deputy Director Errin Briggs said via email on March 14, adding that he was hoping the county would have a decision the following week. 

The Board of Supervisors’ Feb. 25 vote was a first when it comes to a county law known as Chapter 25B. The rule regulates permit transfer applications for oil operations, including drilling, pipelines, and processing facilities. Sable applied under 25B to take over ExxonMobil’s permits for the Santa Ynez Unit processing facilities, gas plant, and its affiliated oil pipelines after purchasing the infrastructure from ExxonMobil last year. While the county Planning Commission approved the transfer last November, environmental organizations appealed that decision to the board. 

“We’re in this very unique place right now, where we have a 2-2 vote, which means no action,” Briggs told the Sun via phone on Feb. 28. “What we don’t want to do is assume that a 2-2 vote under 25B would be the same as it is under other county ordinances. … We feel like we need to do some homework.”

While the Environmental Defense Center said it believes the vote means the county should deny the permit transfer, Sable put out a statement saying that it believed the Planning Commission’s decision stands. 

“We look forward to continuing to work with the county to finalize the permit transfer, and to safely restarting production as soon as possible,” Sable Vice President of Environmental and Governmental Affairs Steve Rusch said in a press release.

The path to restarting the Santa Ynez Unit, which has been idle since the pipeline shut down after the 2015 Refugio oil spill, involves multiple state agencies and federal regulators in addition to getting county approval to change the name of the owner, operator, and guarantor on county permits issued to the facility and its pipelines. The underlying purpose of the ordinance, Briggs said, is to provide the county with an opportunity to dig into a new operator’s ability to safely and responsibly operate the oil assets they’re taking over. 

“The consequences of them making a mistake are huge,” Briggs said. “The stakes are so high that it makes it really important to ensure that these guys can actually do the job properly.” 

Permits mention the company’s name throughout, Briggs said. So after a new company purchases the land, equipment, and the permits, those mentions need to be updated. To do that, the county can require the company to do things like update it oil spill response and prevention plans, share its insurance certificate, and dig into the finances to a certain level. Adopted more than two decades ago, 25B aimed to streamline that process, which the county was dealing with more and more. In the 1980s and 1990s, big oil companies were “dumping off their assets” to companies with much smaller pockets, according to Jeremy Frankel, a staff attorney with the Environmental Defense Center.

With a company like ExxonMobil, there’s no question about whether they can operate responsibly or their financial capabilities, Frankel said. But with a company like Sable, which is fairly new and doesn’t have an established track record, there are questions about whether it can safely operate a facility like the Santa Ynez Unit, which also includes three offshore oil platforms in federal water, and whether it can afford to pay for a worst-case scenario disaster. 

“The big picture is it’s about this concern and the potential liability of the county and the people here. When a spill happens and a company can’t pay for it, it’s really damaging,” Frankel said. “With a major oil and gas facility—this operation would be the biggest on the California coast—it matters quite a bit who’s operating the facilities.” 

A company needs to be able to foot the bill if the worst happens, like the catastrophic 2015 oil spill along the coast that damaged the environment and economy. It also needs to be able to pay for the cost of decommissioning when the facility is no longer useful, Frankel said, so taxpayers don’t end up with the bill. 

The Environmental Defense Center and other environmental organizations do not believe that Sable has the experience or finances to deal with either scenario. Briggs said that county staff does. The state Office of Spill Prevention and Response also believes Sable can handle it. The office signed off on Sable’s insurance and contingency plans for the two oil pipelines in September 2024. Deputy Director Heather Geldart said the company has $121 million in insurance coverage. 

Speaking alongside other department heads at a March 13 town hall in Santa Barbara, Geldart was asked why the insurance requirement wasn’t higher. The Refugio spill cost then pipeline operator Plains All-American an estimated $800 million. 

“Because Sable installed those 27 safety valves across their pipeline, it actually lowered the amount of oil that could be spilled during an event,” Geldart said. “It reduced the volume that can be spilled at any one time.” 

Required by the state fire marshal, the safety valves project was also controversial. It started as an ExxonMobil project and was initially approved by the county Planning Commission, and environmental groups appealed the decision to the Board of Supervisors, which voted 2-2 after 3rd District Supervisor Joan Hartmann recused herself because a portion of the pipeline runs through her property.

Briggs with the county’s Energy, Minerals, and Compliance Division said that vote was also confusing. A 2-2 vote means no action, but the company’s application was still open.

“We weren’t able to approve that request, and we weren’t able to deny it,” he said. “They sued, seeking to compel us to make a decision, and what ended up coming out [of] that lawsuit is a settlement. … Exxon ended up getting their valves.”

Reach Editor Camillia Lanham at clanham@santamariasun.com.

This article appears in Mar 20-30, 2025.