Sable Offshore Corporation is heading for troubled waters—giant waves that most of us could see from a few miles away.
The California Coastal Commission is pissed at the oil company for work it’s been doing to fix its old, janky pipeline that spilled oil all over Refugio Beach in 2015, work the company insists it can complete without new permits. Sable’s been ripping out vegetation, digging down deep, grading over habitat, and running roads and metal plates all over wetlands to “remediate” “anomalies” in the pipe.
And the commission has politely requested that the company stop this work several times over the last few months. Those requests were ignored, kind of. Sable insists that a permit from 1986 authorizes the work, and Santa Barbara County agrees.
But the commission wasn’t being polite anymore on April 10. Staff and commissioners had enough! Commission Deputy Director Cassidy Teufel said that staff had gone to “great lengths” to try and avoid the situation they were in that day and had a “long and productive history” of working and collaborating with the county.
“It was therefore very surprising to hear that the county was aware that Sable’s project was underway and it was to include over 130 individual worksites throughout the coastal zone … and that no coastal development permit was to be issued,” Teufel said. “Given the scale and significance of the project, this information was completely shocking.”
He added that the commission has found no evidence in the 40-year-old existing permits that support either the county or Sable’s position that the work is already authorized.
I can only imagine that Sable’s lawsuit settlement with the county over safety shut-off valves has something to do with it, a settlement that enabled the company to install those valves on the pipeline along the Gaviota coast. Maybe the county decided that it was better for the Coastal Commission’s deep litigation pockets—the number of lawsuits that agency deals with is staggering—to tangle with Sable, which is under a 2026 deadline to get work done on the pipeline and get oil flowing again or it loses everything.
There’s a lot at stake for everyone.
So far, Sable has continued its work through cease and desist orders from a variety of state agencies, including the commission, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board. That board is getting set to recommend the attorney general take Sable to court over its indiscretions. Sable seems to not give a you-know-what.
Maybe that company’s pocketbook is where it’s at? Commissioners decided to fine the company more than staff recommended. A cool $18 million for unpermitted work and a $4 million carrot if the company decides to go through a consolidated coastal development process commission staff devised. As in, a discount to only $14 million in penalties.
The habitat destruction is undeniable. Sable is aggressive. And the commission is punching back. I don’t know if it’s more pissed off at the county or at the oil company.
Commissioner Dayna Bochca said she’d been on the commission for 14 years.
“I was just shocked that the county didn’t show today,” she said. “I have never seen a county behave this way.”
The Canary is shocked at nothing. Send comments to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 17-27, 2025.
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