While California argued that the oil company is trespassing on its parkland because a previously granted easement has long expired, the judge, a Ronald Reagan appointee, said the state had failed to show it faces irreparable harm in the absence of a court order shutting down the pipeline.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe pipeline operated for nearly thirty years below plaintiff\u2019s property without incident,\u201d Wilson wrote. \u201cAlthough the pipeline was initially discontinued due to a catastrophic spill, it is not alleged that any part of the relevant pipeline was responsible for the offending leak, particularly not the segment running beneath the park.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judge also said California was \u201cgrasping at straws\u201d in claiming a sinkhole had formed near the pipeline after it was restarted on March 16 per instruction of the Trump administration.<\/p>\n
Sable, Wilson pointed out, had provided testimony of an expert witness who said the purported sinkhole was no more than a rodent burrow, to which California had no retort.<\/p>\n
The case is one of many challenges to Sable\u2019s reboot of the three oil platforms, known as the Santa Ynez Unit, which the Houston-based company acquired in 2024 together with the pipeline system to move the crude oil to a processing facility onshore and onward to the San Joaquin Valley, the hub of the state\u2019s oil industry.<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, a different federal judge ruled<\/a> that two nonprofits who are challenging the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management\u2019s approval to restart the drilling platforms in Central California lacked standing to bring the lawsuit.<\/p>\n The three platforms across from Santa Barbara County had been shut down in 2015 following a catastrophic oil spill when the a different segment of the pipeline than that underneath Gaviota State Park ruptured.<\/p>\n The 2015 Refugio Oil Spill dumped more than120,000 gallons of oil in the ocean, leaving miles of coastline blackened and \u2014 for a time \u2014 crippling local tourism and fishing industries. The cost of the cleanup was estimated to be around $86 million.<\/p>\n The rupture was linked to a corroded line, owned and operated by Plains All American Pipeline. In 2018, a jury\u00a0convicted<\/a>\u00a0the company of nine criminal charges.<\/p>\n Sable said in a court filings that it has invested over $1.4 billion to restart the oil platforms and pipeline after a more than decadelong period of dormancy, including over $215 million in repairs and upgrades to the pipeline.<\/p>\n In March, after the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran disrupted global oil shipments, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright ordered Sable to start using the patched-up pipeline to transport oil from the offshore platforms under the Defense Production Act.<\/p>\n The company said in March it expects to produce and transport 50,000 barrels of day from the Santa Ynez Unit.<\/p>\n Representatives of the California Attorney General\u2019s Office, which is representing Parks and Recreation in the lawsuit, and of Sable didn\u2019t immediately respond to requests for comment on the ruling.<\/p>\n