Commentary: An oil company joins with the Trump administration to bully California over offshore drilling

Oil companies aren’t known for playing nice with their adversaries. Put them together with the Trump administration’s reliance on bullying to get its way, and watch the public interest get trampled.

That is what’s happening with an effort by Sable Offshore Corp., a Houston oil company, to restart a California oil pipeline system that has been fallow since 2015, when a leak from a corroded line spilled nearly 143,000 gallons of crude oil, fouling miles of the Santa Barbara coastline, including several marine preserves.

Actually, the pipelines actually have already been restarted, thanks to a March 13 Trump administration order that cited “national security” as a rationale for preempting not merely state laws and regulations, but a 2020 consent decree that was agreed on by the federal government. The consent decree set forth numerous procedural and operational safeguards to be met before the pipelines could be restarted.

Sable acquired the pipeline system in 2024, but acknowledges that it’s subject to the consent decree.

Sable says that it has met all the requirements of the consent decree, having spent more than $100 million on repairs and upgrades. The obstacle to restarting the lines, it has said, is the Newsom administration. Accordingly, it sought President Trump’s help in defeating the state.

That assistance arrived on March 13 from the Department of Energy, which invoked the Cold War-era Defense Production Act in ordering oil production from Sable’s offshore platforms and its pipelines to resume immediately. Sable immediately complied, and oil has been flowing ever since, despite state orders to keep the system shut down.

It shouldn’t be surprising that this battle has generated reams of litigation, as my colleague Grace Toohey has monitored assiduously. The latest development came April 17 in Santa Barbara state court, where Judge Donna Geck ruled that the injunction she issued in July 2025 blocking the pipeline restart remains in effect — denying the government’s claim that its Defense Production Act order preempted her injunction and the consent decree.

A further hearing on the matter is scheduled for May 22, when environmental groups will ask Geck to find Sable in contempt of court for starting up the pipelines without required state permission.

Sable says it’s in the clear.

“We believe we’re not in contempt of court and have immunity from this action,” the oil company’s outside counsel, Jeffrey Dintzer of Los Angeles, told me, citing the preemption afforded the Defense Production Act over state and local regulations.

The so-called Refugio oil spill of 2015 evoked memories of the Santa Barbara spill of 1969, which turbocharged a nascent environmental movement and helped launch Earth Day as an annual event. (This year it’s celebrated on Wednesday.) The Refugio spill was much smaller than its 1969 predecessor but may have been even more environmentally damaging, since it contaminated four marine protected areas.

The pipeline system that spilled the oil was acquired in 2022 by ExxonMobil and in 2024 by Sable, which hadn’t recorded revenues from the operation through most of the first quarter of this year. Sable announced on March 30 that it was starting oil sales from the system, but hasn’t disclosed any revenues.

Sable’s very existence is tied in with the restart of the pipeline system, according to its financial disclosures. The company reported a loss of more than $410 million last year, citing restart-related expenses and interest payments.

The consent decree vested oversight of the pipelines in the state, on grounds that the lines are intrastate facilities and therefore not subject to federal regulation.

Last year, at Sable’s instigation, the Trump administration redesignated the system as interstate. In other words, it gave itself the authority to assume oversight, specifically through the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a unit of the Department of Transportation.

That step has come under a double-pincer assault by the state and environmental groups in Los Angeles federal court and the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The federal redesignation was based on the idea that because the oil being fed into the pipelines was extracted from an offshore platform sitting in federal waters, the whole system is interstate — a “novel theory,” to quote the state’s Los Angeles lawsuit.

“The pipelines very clearly begin and end within state lines,” says Talia Nimmer, a lawyer at the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental plaintiffs in the federal cases. “They begin in Santa Barbara County and end in Kern County.”

The government’s national security claim rests on the assertion that since California is host to more than 30 military installations, its anti-petroleum policies and politic and its reliance on foreign oil supplies — which account for more than 60% of consumption— “compromise U.S. force readiness and national security in times of global oil production stress and supply chain disruption,” as USC economist Michael Mische put it in a market analysis Sable filed in Santa Barbara state court.

The Department of Energy contends that “radical state policies” are responsible for a decline in petroleum production in California. It also blames California’s adherence to the “green new scam,” a phrase I previously labeled as “an infantile reference,” to policies incorporating a transition from fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal to renewables.

To say the least, the government has some nerve in raising the issue. The biggest threat to the international oil supply, including the oil California imports from the Middle East, is Trump’s Iran war, which shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20% of global oil, or 21 million barrels a day, passes.

That was true on March 13, or two weeks before Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued the Defense Production Act order and justified it by wringing his hands over California’s green policies.

In any event, ascribing the oil crisis to California politics, as the Trump White House does, is by its own admission a stretch. Mische’s analysis blames at least some of the state’s gasoline production constraints on a Feb. 1, 2025, fire that kept a Martinez refinery fully or partially offline until late that year. A fire at a second Martinez refinery occurred in November 2023, and that refinery still hasn’t fully recovered.

California domestic oil production, which fell to 110.6 million barrels in 2025, has been declining since 1986, when it peaked at more than 402 million barrels. The decline is due in part to depleted wells and to environmental regulations that make drilling in California more expensive than elsewhere, for petroleum that fetches a lower price on international markets than oil from Texas or New Mexico.

As it happens, the Newsom administration has been somewhat more tolerant of increased onshore production than some of its predecessors, streamlining permits for thousands of new wells in Kern County.

Even maximum production from the offshore wells controlled by Sable would have a negligible effect on global oil supplies or prices, according to oil economist Paasha Mahdavi of UC Santa Barbara, whose analysis was filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by environmental groups fighting the pipeline restart.

The highest estimates of the oil that could flow through the pipelines from Sables’ offshore platforms — more than 60,000 barrels a day — would barely move the needle on U.S. resources, especially considering that the U.S. already produces so much oil it’s a net exporter of the black gold.

That underscores how so much of the Trump administration’s campaigning for the Sable pipeline reflects partisan politics more than the demands of national security. Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed back against the Trump rhetoric about what the Energy Department termed “California’s war on American energy” by snapping that “no drop in the bucket like Sable can make up for Trump’s war choking off a fifth of the world’s oil supply” by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

It’s also true that one important reason why California’s gas prices are generally higher than those in the U.S. is that this state’s policies fostering low emissions and clean air come at a cost — and one that the state’s voters generally favor. These include cap-and-trade rules that discourage polluters but add an estimated 5% to prices at the pump, and requirements for gasoline formulations that reduce pollution, also at a 5% cost.

Put it all together, however, and the truth remains that the largest component of gas prices in California is the price of crude oil, which has soared from about $55 a barrel at the beginning of the year to as much as $114 this month. That’s an artifact of Trump policies, not California. And it won’t be helped by putting more oil through a pipeline that has had a checkered record for safety.

Oil companies aren’t known for playing nice with their adversaries. Put them together with the Trump administration’s reliance on bullying to get its way, and watch the public interest get trampled.

That is what’s happening with an effort by Sable Offshore Corp., a Houston oil company, to restart a California oil pipeline system that has been fallow since 2015, when a leak from a corroded line spilled nearly 143,000 gallons of crude oil, fouling miles of the Santa Barbara coastline, including several marine preserves.

Actually, the pipelines actually have already been restarted, thanks to a March 13 Trump administration order that cited “national security” as a rationale for preempting not merely state laws and regulations, but a 2020 consent decree that was agreed on by the federal government. The consent decree set forth numerous procedural and operational safeguards to be met before the pipelines could be restarted.

Sable acquired the pipeline system in 2024, but acknowledges that it’s subject to the consent decree.

Sable says that it has met all the requirements of the consent decree, having spent more than $100 million on repairs and upgrades. The obstacle to restarting the lines, it has said, is the Newsom administration. Accordingly, it sought President Trump’s help in defeating the state.

That assistance arrived on March 13 from the Department of Energy, which invoked the Cold War-era Defense Production Act in ordering oil production from Sable’s offshore platforms and its pipelines to resume immediately. Sable immediately complied, and oil has been flowing ever since, despite state orders to keep the system shut down.

It shouldn’t be surprising that this battle has generated reams of litigation, as my colleague Grace Toohey has monitored assiduously. The latest development came April 17 in Santa Barbara state court, where Judge Donna Geck ruled that the injunction she issued in July 2025 blocking the pipeline restart remains in effect — denying the government’s claim that its Defense Production Act order preempted her injunction and the consent decree.

A further hearing on the matter is scheduled for May 22, when environmental groups will ask Geck to find Sable in contempt of court for starting up the pipelines without required state permission.

Sable says it’s in the clear.

“We believe we’re not in contempt of court and have immunity from this action,” the oil company’s outside counsel, Jeffrey Dintzer of Los Angeles, told me, citing the preemption afforded the Defense Production Act over state and local regulations.

The so-called Refugio oil spill of 2015 evoked memories of the Santa Barbara spill of 1969, which turbocharged a nascent environmental movement and helped launch Earth Day as an annual event. (This year it’s celebrated on Wednesday.) The Refugio spill was much smaller than its 1969 predecessor but may have been even more environmentally damaging, since it contaminated four marine protected areas.

The pipeline system that spilled the oil was acquired in 2022 by ExxonMobil and in 2024 by Sable, which hadn’t recorded revenues from the operation through most of the first quarter of this year. Sable announced on March 30 that it was starting oil sales from the system, but hasn’t disclosed any revenues.

Sable’s very existence is tied in with the restart of the pipeline system, according to its financial disclosures. The company reported a loss of more than $410 million last year, citing restart-related expenses and interest payments.

The consent decree vested oversight of the pipelines in the state, on grounds that the lines are intrastate facilities and therefore not subject to federal regulation.

Last year, at Sable’s instigation, the Trump administration redesignated the system as interstate. In other words, it gave itself the authority to assume oversight, specifically through the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a unit of the Department of Transportation.

That step has come under a double-pincer assault by the state and environmental groups in Los Angeles federal court and the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The federal redesignation was based on the idea that because the oil being fed into the pipelines was extracted from an offshore platform sitting in federal waters, the whole system is interstate — a “novel theory,” to quote the state’s Los Angeles lawsuit.

“The pipelines very clearly begin and end within state lines,” says Talia Nimmer, a lawyer at the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental plaintiffs in the federal cases. “They begin in Santa Barbara County and end in Kern County.”

The government’s national security claim rests on the assertion that since California is host to more than 30 military installations, its anti-petroleum policies and politic and its reliance on foreign oil supplies — which account for more than 60% of consumption— “compromise U.S. force readiness and national security in times of global oil production stress and supply chain disruption,” as USC economist Michael Mische put it in a market analysis Sable filed in Santa Barbara state court.

The Department of Energy contends that “radical state policies” are responsible for a decline in petroleum production in California. It also blames California’s adherence to the “green new scam,” a phrase I previously labeled as “an infantile reference,” to policies incorporating a transition from fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal to renewables.

To say the least, the government has some nerve in raising the issue. The biggest threat to the international oil supply, including the oil California imports from the Middle East, is Trump’s Iran war, which shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20% of global oil, or 21 million barrels a day, passes.

That was true on March 13, or two weeks before Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued the Defense Production Act order and justified it by wringing his hands over California’s green policies.

In any event, ascribing the oil crisis to California politics, as the Trump White House does, is by its own admission a stretch. Mische’s analysis blames at least some of the state’s gasoline production constraints on a Feb. 1, 2025, fire that kept a Martinez refinery fully or partially offline until late that year. A fire at a second Martinez refinery occurred in November 2023, and that refinery still hasn’t fully recovered.

California domestic oil production, which fell to 110.6 million barrels in 2025, has been declining since 1986, when it peaked at more than 402 million barrels. The decline is due in part to depleted wells and to environmental regulations that make drilling in California more expensive than elsewhere, for petroleum that fetches a lower price on international markets than oil from Texas or New Mexico.

As it happens, the Newsom administration has been somewhat more tolerant of increased onshore production than some of its predecessors, streamlining permits for thousands of new wells in Kern County.

Even maximum production from the offshore wells controlled by Sable would have a negligible effect on global oil supplies or prices, according to oil economist Paasha Mahdavi of UC Santa Barbara, whose analysis was filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by environmental groups fighting the pipeline restart.

The highest estimates of the oil that could flow through the pipelines from Sables’ offshore platforms — more than 60,000 barrels a day — would barely move the needle on U.S. resources, especially considering that the U.S. already produces so much oil it’s a net exporter of the black gold.

That underscores how so much of the Trump administration’s campaigning for the Sable pipeline reflects partisan politics more than the demands of national security. Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed back against the Trump rhetoric about what the Energy Department termed “California’s war on American energy” by snapping that “no drop in the bucket like Sable can make up for Trump’s war choking off a fifth of the world’s oil supply” by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

It’s also true that one important reason why California’s gas prices are generally higher than those in the U.S. is that this state’s policies fostering low emissions and clean air come at a cost — and one that the state’s voters generally favor. These include cap-and-trade rules that discourage polluters but add an estimated 5% to prices at the pump, and requirements for gasoline formulations that reduce pollution, also at a 5% cost.

Put it all together, however, and the truth remains that the largest component of gas prices in California is the price of crude oil, which has soared from about $55 a barrel at the beginning of the year to as much as $114 this month. That’s an artifact of Trump policies, not California. And it won’t be helped by putting more oil through a pipeline that has had a checkered record for safety.

Oil companies aren’t known for playing nice with their adversaries. Put them together with the Trump administration’s reliance on bullying to get its way, and watch the public interest get trampled.

That is what’s happening with an effort by Sable Offshore Corp., a Houston oil company, to restart a California oil pipeline system that has been fallow since 2015, when a leak from a corroded line spilled nearly 143,000 gallons of crude oil, fouling miles of the Santa Barbara coastline, including several marine preserves.

Actually, the pipelines actually have already been restarted, thanks to a March 13 Trump administration order that cited “national security” as a rationale for preempting not merely state laws and regulations, but a 2020 consent decree that was agreed on by the federal government. The consent decree set forth numerous procedural and operational safeguards to be met before the pipelines could be restarted.

Sable acquired the pipeline system in 2024, but acknowledges that it’s subject to the consent decree.

Sable says that it has met all the requirements of the consent decree, having spent more than $100 million on repairs and upgrades. The obstacle to restarting the lines, it has said, is the Newsom administration. Accordingly, it sought President Trump’s help in defeating the state.

That assistance arrived on March 13 from the Department of Energy, which invoked the Cold War-era Defense Production Act in ordering oil production from Sable’s offshore platforms and its pipelines to resume immediately. Sable immediately complied, and oil has been flowing ever since, despite state orders to keep the system shut down.

It shouldn’t be surprising that this battle has generated reams of litigation, as my colleague Grace Toohey has monitored assiduously. The latest development came April 17 in Santa Barbara state court, where Judge Donna Geck ruled that the injunction she issued in July 2025 blocking the pipeline restart remains in effect — denying the government’s claim that its Defense Production Act order preempted her injunction and the consent decree.

A further hearing on the matter is scheduled for May 22, when environmental groups will ask Geck to find Sable in contempt of court for starting up the pipelines without required state permission.

Sable says it’s in the clear.

“We believe we’re not in contempt of court and have immunity from this action,” the oil company’s outside counsel, Jeffrey Dintzer of Los Angeles, told me, citing the preemption afforded the Defense Production Act over state and local regulations.

The so-called Refugio oil spill of 2015 evoked memories of the Santa Barbara spill of 1969, which turbocharged a nascent environmental movement and helped launch Earth Day as an annual event. (This year it’s celebrated on Wednesday.) The Refugio spill was much smaller than its 1969 predecessor but may have been even more environmentally damaging, since it contaminated four marine protected areas.

The pipeline system that spilled the oil was acquired in 2022 by ExxonMobil and in 2024 by Sable, which hadn’t recorded revenues from the operation through most of the first quarter of this year. Sable announced on March 30 that it was starting oil sales from the system, but hasn’t disclosed any revenues.

Sable’s very existence is tied in with the restart of the pipeline system, according to its financial disclosures. The company reported a loss of more than $410 million last year, citing restart-related expenses and interest payments.

The consent decree vested oversight of the pipelines in the state, on grounds that the lines are intrastate facilities and therefore not subject to federal regulation.

Last year, at Sable’s instigation, the Trump administration redesignated the system as interstate. In other words, it gave itself the authority to assume oversight, specifically through the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a unit of the Department of Transportation.

That step has come under a double-pincer assault by the state and environmental groups in Los Angeles federal court and the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The federal redesignation was based on the idea that because the oil being fed into the pipelines was extracted from an offshore platform sitting in federal waters, the whole system is interstate — a “novel theory,” to quote the state’s Los Angeles lawsuit.

“The pipelines very clearly begin and end within state lines,” says Talia Nimmer, a lawyer at the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental plaintiffs in the federal cases. “They begin in Santa Barbara County and end in Kern County.”

The government’s national security claim rests on the assertion that since California is host to more than 30 military installations, its anti-petroleum policies and politic and its reliance on foreign oil supplies — which account for more than 60% of consumption— “compromise U.S. force readiness and national security in times of global oil production stress and supply chain disruption,” as USC economist Michael Mische put it in a market analysis Sable filed in Santa Barbara state court.

The Department of Energy contends that “radical state policies” are responsible for a decline in petroleum production in California. It also blames California’s adherence to the “green new scam,” a phrase I previously labeled as “an infantile reference,” to policies incorporating a transition from fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal to renewables.

To say the least, the government has some nerve in raising the issue. The biggest threat to the international oil supply, including the oil California imports from the Middle East, is Trump’s Iran war, which shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20% of global oil, or 21 million barrels a day, passes.

That was true on March 13, or two weeks before Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued the Defense Production Act order and justified it by wringing his hands over California’s green policies.

In any event, ascribing the oil crisis to California politics, as the Trump White House does, is by its own admission a stretch. Mische’s analysis blames at least some of the state’s gasoline production constraints on a Feb. 1, 2025, fire that kept a Martinez refinery fully or partially offline until late that year. A fire at a second Martinez refinery occurred in November 2023, and that refinery still hasn’t fully recovered.

California domestic oil production, which fell to 110.6 million barrels in 2025, has been declining since 1986, when it peaked at more than 402 million barrels. The decline is due in part to depleted wells and to environmental regulations that make drilling in California more expensive than elsewhere, for petroleum that fetches a lower price on international markets than oil from Texas or New Mexico.

As it happens, the Newsom administration has been somewhat more tolerant of increased onshore production than some of its predecessors, streamlining permits for thousands of new wells in Kern County.

Even maximum production from the offshore wells controlled by Sable would have a negligible effect on global oil supplies or prices, according to oil economist Paasha Mahdavi of UC Santa Barbara, whose analysis was filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by environmental groups fighting the pipeline restart.

The highest estimates of the oil that could flow through the pipelines from Sables’ offshore platforms — more than 60,000 barrels a day — would barely move the needle on U.S. resources, especially considering that the U.S. already produces so much oil it’s a net exporter of the black gold.

That underscores how so much of the Trump administration’s campaigning for the Sable pipeline reflects partisan politics more than the demands of national security. Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed back against the Trump rhetoric about what the Energy Department termed “California’s war on American energy” by snapping that “no drop in the bucket like Sable can make up for Trump’s war choking off a fifth of the world’s oil supply” by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

It’s also true that one important reason why California’s gas prices are generally higher than those in the U.S. is that this state’s policies fostering low emissions and clean air come at a cost — and one that the state’s voters generally favor. These include cap-and-trade rules that discourage polluters but add an estimated 5% to prices at the pump, and requirements for gasoline formulations that reduce pollution, also at a 5% cost.

Put it all together, however, and the truth remains that the largest component of gas prices in California is the price of crude oil, which has soared from about $55 a barrel at the beginning of the year to as much as $114 this month. That’s an artifact of Trump policies, not California. And it won’t be helped by putting more oil through a pipeline that has had a checkered record for safety.

Oil companies aren’t known for playing nice with their adversaries. Put them together with the Trump administration’s reliance on bullying to get its way, and watch the public interest get trampled.

That is what’s happening with an effort by Sable Offshore Corp., a Houston oil company, to restart a California oil pipeline system that has been fallow since 2015, when a leak from a corroded line spilled nearly 143,000 gallons of crude oil, fouling miles of the Santa Barbara coastline, including several marine preserves.

Actually, the pipelines actually have already been restarted, thanks to a March 13 Trump administration order that cited “national security” as a rationale for preempting not merely state laws and regulations, but a 2020 consent decree that was agreed on by the federal government. The consent decree set forth numerous procedural and operational safeguards to be met before the pipelines could be restarted.

Sable acquired the pipeline system in 2024, but acknowledges that it’s subject to the consent decree.

Sable says that it has met all the requirements of the consent decree, having spent more than $100 million on repairs and upgrades. The obstacle to restarting the lines, it has said, is the Newsom administration. Accordingly, it sought President Trump’s help in defeating the state.

That assistance arrived on March 13 from the Department of Energy, which invoked the Cold War-era Defense Production Act in ordering oil production from Sable’s offshore platforms and its pipelines to resume immediately. Sable immediately complied, and oil has been flowing ever since, despite state orders to keep the system shut down.

It shouldn’t be surprising that this battle has generated reams of litigation, as my colleague Grace Toohey has monitored assiduously. The latest development came April 17 in Santa Barbara state court, where Judge Donna Geck ruled that the injunction she issued in July 2025 blocking the pipeline restart remains in effect — denying the government’s claim that its Defense Production Act order preempted her injunction and the consent decree.

A further hearing on the matter is scheduled for May 22, when environmental groups will ask Geck to find Sable in contempt of court for starting up the pipelines without required state permission.

Sable says it’s in the clear.

“We believe we’re not in contempt of court and have immunity from this action,” the oil company’s outside counsel, Jeffrey Dintzer of Los Angeles, told me, citing the preemption afforded the Defense Production Act over state and local regulations.

The so-called Refugio oil spill of 2015 evoked memories of the Santa Barbara spill of 1969, which turbocharged a nascent environmental movement and helped launch Earth Day as an annual event. (This year it’s celebrated on Wednesday.) The Refugio spill was much smaller than its 1969 predecessor but may have been even more environmentally damaging, since it contaminated four marine protected areas.

The pipeline system that spilled the oil was acquired in 2022 by ExxonMobil and in 2024 by Sable, which hadn’t recorded revenues from the operation through most of the first quarter of this year. Sable announced on March 30 that it was starting oil sales from the system, but hasn’t disclosed any revenues.

Sable’s very existence is tied in with the restart of the pipeline system, according to its financial disclosures. The company reported a loss of more than $410 million last year, citing restart-related expenses and interest payments.

The consent decree vested oversight of the pipelines in the state, on grounds that the lines are intrastate facilities and therefore not subject to federal regulation.

Last year, at Sable’s instigation, the Trump administration redesignated the system as interstate. In other words, it gave itself the authority to assume oversight, specifically through the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a unit of the Department of Transportation.

That step has come under a double-pincer assault by the state and environmental groups in Los Angeles federal court and the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The federal redesignation was based on the idea that because the oil being fed into the pipelines was extracted from an offshore platform sitting in federal waters, the whole system is interstate — a “novel theory,” to quote the state’s Los Angeles lawsuit.

“The pipelines very clearly begin and end within state lines,” says Talia Nimmer, a lawyer at the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental plaintiffs in the federal cases. “They begin in Santa Barbara County and end in Kern County.”

The government’s national security claim rests on the assertion that since California is host to more than 30 military installations, its anti-petroleum policies and politic and its reliance on foreign oil supplies — which account for more than 60% of consumption— “compromise U.S. force readiness and national security in times of global oil production stress and supply chain disruption,” as USC economist Michael Mische put it in a market analysis Sable filed in Santa Barbara state court.

The Department of Energy contends that “radical state policies” are responsible for a decline in petroleum production in California. It also blames California’s adherence to the “green new scam,” a phrase I previously labeled as “an infantile reference,” to policies incorporating a transition from fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal to renewables.

To say the least, the government has some nerve in raising the issue. The biggest threat to the international oil supply, including the oil California imports from the Middle East, is Trump’s Iran war, which shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20% of global oil, or 21 million barrels a day, passes.

That was true on March 13, or two weeks before Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued the Defense Production Act order and justified it by wringing his hands over California’s green policies.

In any event, ascribing the oil crisis to California politics, as the Trump White House does, is by its own admission a stretch. Mische’s analysis blames at least some of the state’s gasoline production constraints on a Feb. 1, 2025, fire that kept a Martinez refinery fully or partially offline until late that year. A fire at a second Martinez refinery occurred in November 2023, and that refinery still hasn’t fully recovered.

California domestic oil production, which fell to 110.6 million barrels in 2025, has been declining since 1986, when it peaked at more than 402 million barrels. The decline is due in part to depleted wells and to environmental regulations that make drilling in California more expensive than elsewhere, for petroleum that fetches a lower price on international markets than oil from Texas or New Mexico.

As it happens, the Newsom administration has been somewhat more tolerant of increased onshore production than some of its predecessors, streamlining permits for thousands of new wells in Kern County.

Even maximum production from the offshore wells controlled by Sable would have a negligible effect on global oil supplies or prices, according to oil economist Paasha Mahdavi of UC Santa Barbara, whose analysis was filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by environmental groups fighting the pipeline restart.

The highest estimates of the oil that could flow through the pipelines from Sables’ offshore platforms — more than 60,000 barrels a day — would barely move the needle on U.S. resources, especially considering that the U.S. already produces so much oil it’s a net exporter of the black gold.

That underscores how so much of the Trump administration’s campaigning for the Sable pipeline reflects partisan politics more than the demands of national security. Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed back against the Trump rhetoric about what the Energy Department termed “California’s war on American energy” by snapping that “no drop in the bucket like Sable can make up for Trump’s war choking off a fifth of the world’s oil supply” by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

It’s also true that one important reason why California’s gas prices are generally higher than those in the U.S. is that this state’s policies fostering low emissions and clean air come at a cost — and one that the state’s voters generally favor. These include cap-and-trade rules that discourage polluters but add an estimated 5% to prices at the pump, and requirements for gasoline formulations that reduce pollution, also at a 5% cost.

Put it all together, however, and the truth remains that the largest component of gas prices in California is the price of crude oil, which has soared from about $55 a barrel at the beginning of the year to as much as $114 this month. That’s an artifact of Trump policies, not California. And it won’t be helped by putting more oil through a pipeline that has had a checkered record for safety.

Oil companies aren’t known for playing nice with their adversaries. Put them together with the Trump administration’s reliance on bullying to get its way, and watch the public interest get trampled.

That is what’s happening with an effort by Sable Offshore Corp., a Houston oil company, to restart a California oil pipeline system that has been fallow since 2015, when a leak from a corroded line spilled nearly 143,000 gallons of crude oil, fouling miles of the Santa Barbara coastline, including several marine preserves.

Actually, the pipelines actually have already been restarted, thanks to a March 13 Trump administration order that cited “national security” as a rationale for preempting not merely state laws and regulations, but a 2020 consent decree that was agreed on by the federal government. The consent decree set forth numerous procedural and operational safeguards to be met before the pipelines could be restarted.

Sable acquired the pipeline system in 2024, but acknowledges that it’s subject to the consent decree.

Sable says that it has met all the requirements of the consent decree, having spent more than $100 million on repairs and upgrades. The obstacle to restarting the lines, it has said, is the Newsom administration. Accordingly, it sought President Trump’s help in defeating the state.

That assistance arrived on March 13 from the Department of Energy, which invoked the Cold War-era Defense Production Act in ordering oil production from Sable’s offshore platforms and its pipelines to resume immediately. Sable immediately complied, and oil has been flowing ever since, despite state orders to keep the system shut down.

It shouldn’t be surprising that this battle has generated reams of litigation, as my colleague Grace Toohey has monitored assiduously. The latest development came April 17 in Santa Barbara state court, where Judge Donna Geck ruled that the injunction she issued in July 2025 blocking the pipeline restart remains in effect — denying the government’s claim that its Defense Production Act order preempted her injunction and the consent decree.

A further hearing on the matter is scheduled for May 22, when environmental groups will ask Geck to find Sable in contempt of court for starting up the pipelines without required state permission.

Sable says it’s in the clear.

“We believe we’re not in contempt of court and have immunity from this action,” the oil company’s outside counsel, Jeffrey Dintzer of Los Angeles, told me, citing the preemption afforded the Defense Production Act over state and local regulations.

The so-called Refugio oil spill of 2015 evoked memories of the Santa Barbara spill of 1969, which turbocharged a nascent environmental movement and helped launch Earth Day as an annual event. (This year it’s celebrated on Wednesday.) The Refugio spill was much smaller than its 1969 predecessor but may have been even more environmentally damaging, since it contaminated four marine protected areas.

The pipeline system that spilled the oil was acquired in 2022 by ExxonMobil and in 2024 by Sable, which hadn’t recorded revenues from the operation through most of the first quarter of this year. Sable announced on March 30 that it was starting oil sales from the system, but hasn’t disclosed any revenues.

Sable’s very existence is tied in with the restart of the pipeline system, according to its financial disclosures. The company reported a loss of more than $410 million last year, citing restart-related expenses and interest payments.

The consent decree vested oversight of the pipelines in the state, on grounds that the lines are intrastate facilities and therefore not subject to federal regulation.

Last year, at Sable’s instigation, the Trump administration redesignated the system as interstate. In other words, it gave itself the authority to assume oversight, specifically through the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a unit of the Department of Transportation.

That step has come under a double-pincer assault by the state and environmental groups in Los Angeles federal court and the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The federal redesignation was based on the idea that because the oil being fed into the pipelines was extracted from an offshore platform sitting in federal waters, the whole system is interstate — a “novel theory,” to quote the state’s Los Angeles lawsuit.

“The pipelines very clearly begin and end within state lines,” says Talia Nimmer, a lawyer at the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental plaintiffs in the federal cases. “They begin in Santa Barbara County and end in Kern County.”

The government’s national security claim rests on the assertion that since California is host to more than 30 military installations, its anti-petroleum policies and politic and its reliance on foreign oil supplies — which account for more than 60% of consumption— “compromise U.S. force readiness and national security in times of global oil production stress and supply chain disruption,” as USC economist Michael Mische put it in a market analysis Sable filed in Santa Barbara state court.

The Department of Energy contends that “radical state policies” are responsible for a decline in petroleum production in California. It also blames California’s adherence to the “green new scam,” a phrase I previously labeled as “an infantile reference,” to policies incorporating a transition from fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal to renewables.

To say the least, the government has some nerve in raising the issue. The biggest threat to the international oil supply, including the oil California imports from the Middle East, is Trump’s Iran war, which shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20% of global oil, or 21 million barrels a day, passes.

That was true on March 13, or two weeks before Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued the Defense Production Act order and justified it by wringing his hands over California’s green policies.

In any event, ascribing the oil crisis to California politics, as the Trump White House does, is by its own admission a stretch. Mische’s analysis blames at least some of the state’s gasoline production constraints on a Feb. 1, 2025, fire that kept a Martinez refinery fully or partially offline until late that year. A fire at a second Martinez refinery occurred in November 2023, and that refinery still hasn’t fully recovered.

California domestic oil production, which fell to 110.6 million barrels in 2025, has been declining since 1986, when it peaked at more than 402 million barrels. The decline is due in part to depleted wells and to environmental regulations that make drilling in California more expensive than elsewhere, for petroleum that fetches a lower price on international markets than oil from Texas or New Mexico.

As it happens, the Newsom administration has been somewhat more tolerant of increased onshore production than some of its predecessors, streamlining permits for thousands of new wells in Kern County.

Even maximum production from the offshore wells controlled by Sable would have a negligible effect on global oil supplies or prices, according to oil economist Paasha Mahdavi of UC Santa Barbara, whose analysis was filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by environmental groups fighting the pipeline restart.

The highest estimates of the oil that could flow through the pipelines from Sables’ offshore platforms — more than 60,000 barrels a day — would barely move the needle on U.S. resources, especially considering that the U.S. already produces so much oil it’s a net exporter of the black gold.

That underscores how so much of the Trump administration’s campaigning for the Sable pipeline reflects partisan politics more than the demands of national security. Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed back against the Trump rhetoric about what the Energy Department termed “California’s war on American energy” by snapping that “no drop in the bucket like Sable can make up for Trump’s war choking off a fifth of the world’s oil supply” by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

It’s also true that one important reason why California’s gas prices are generally higher than those in the U.S. is that this state’s policies fostering low emissions and clean air come at a cost — and one that the state’s voters generally favor. These include cap-and-trade rules that discourage polluters but add an estimated 5% to prices at the pump, and requirements for gasoline formulations that reduce pollution, also at a 5% cost.

Put it all together, however, and the truth remains that the largest component of gas prices in California is the price of crude oil, which has soared from about $55 a barrel at the beginning of the year to as much as $114 this month. That’s an artifact of Trump policies, not California. And it won’t be helped by putting more oil through a pipeline that has had a checkered record for safety.

Oil companies aren’t known for playing nice with their adversaries. Put them together with the Trump administration’s reliance on bullying to get its way, and watch the public interest get trampled.

That is what’s happening with an effort by Sable Offshore Corp., a Houston oil company, to restart a California oil pipeline system that has been fallow since 2015, when a leak from a corroded line spilled nearly 143,000 gallons of crude oil, fouling miles of the Santa Barbara coastline, including several marine preserves.

Actually, the pipelines actually have already been restarted, thanks to a March 13 Trump administration order that cited “national security” as a rationale for preempting not merely state laws and regulations, but a 2020 consent decree that was agreed on by the federal government. The consent decree set forth numerous procedural and operational safeguards to be met before the pipelines could be restarted.

Sable acquired the pipeline system in 2024, but acknowledges that it’s subject to the consent decree.

Sable says that it has met all the requirements of the consent decree, having spent more than $100 million on repairs and upgrades. The obstacle to restarting the lines, it has said, is the Newsom administration. Accordingly, it sought President Trump’s help in defeating the state.

That assistance arrived on March 13 from the Department of Energy, which invoked the Cold War-era Defense Production Act in ordering oil production from Sable’s offshore platforms and its pipelines to resume immediately. Sable immediately complied, and oil has been flowing ever since, despite state orders to keep the system shut down.

It shouldn’t be surprising that this battle has generated reams of litigation, as my colleague Grace Toohey has monitored assiduously. The latest development came April 17 in Santa Barbara state court, where Judge Donna Geck ruled that the injunction she issued in July 2025 blocking the pipeline restart remains in effect — denying the government’s claim that its Defense Production Act order preempted her injunction and the consent decree.

A further hearing on the matter is scheduled for May 22, when environmental groups will ask Geck to find Sable in contempt of court for starting up the pipelines without required state permission.

Sable says it’s in the clear.

“We believe we’re not in contempt of court and have immunity from this action,” the oil company’s outside counsel, Jeffrey Dintzer of Los Angeles, told me, citing the preemption afforded the Defense Production Act over state and local regulations.

The so-called Refugio oil spill of 2015 evoked memories of the Santa Barbara spill of 1969, which turbocharged a nascent environmental movement and helped launch Earth Day as an annual event. (This year it’s celebrated on Wednesday.) The Refugio spill was much smaller than its 1969 predecessor but may have been even more environmentally damaging, since it contaminated four marine protected areas.

The pipeline system that spilled the oil was acquired in 2022 by ExxonMobil and in 2024 by Sable, which hadn’t recorded revenues from the operation through most of the first quarter of this year. Sable announced on March 30 that it was starting oil sales from the system, but hasn’t disclosed any revenues.

Sable’s very existence is tied in with the restart of the pipeline system, according to its financial disclosures. The company reported a loss of more than $410 million last year, citing restart-related expenses and interest payments.

The consent decree vested oversight of the pipelines in the state, on grounds that the lines are intrastate facilities and therefore not subject to federal regulation.

Last year, at Sable’s instigation, the Trump administration redesignated the system as interstate. In other words, it gave itself the authority to assume oversight, specifically through the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a unit of the Department of Transportation.

That step has come under a double-pincer assault by the state and environmental groups in Los Angeles federal court and the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The federal redesignation was based on the idea that because the oil being fed into the pipelines was extracted from an offshore platform sitting in federal waters, the whole system is interstate — a “novel theory,” to quote the state’s Los Angeles lawsuit.

“The pipelines very clearly begin and end within state lines,” says Talia Nimmer, a lawyer at the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental plaintiffs in the federal cases. “They begin in Santa Barbara County and end in Kern County.”

The government’s national security claim rests on the assertion that since California is host to more than 30 military installations, its anti-petroleum policies and politic and its reliance on foreign oil supplies — which account for more than 60% of consumption— “compromise U.S. force readiness and national security in times of global oil production stress and supply chain disruption,” as USC economist Michael Mische put it in a market analysis Sable filed in Santa Barbara state court.

The Department of Energy contends that “radical state policies” are responsible for a decline in petroleum production in California. It also blames California’s adherence to the “green new scam,” a phrase I previously labeled as “an infantile reference,” to policies incorporating a transition from fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal to renewables.

To say the least, the government has some nerve in raising the issue. The biggest threat to the international oil supply, including the oil California imports from the Middle East, is Trump’s Iran war, which shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20% of global oil, or 21 million barrels a day, passes.

That was true on March 13, or two weeks before Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued the Defense Production Act order and justified it by wringing his hands over California’s green policies.

In any event, ascribing the oil crisis to California politics, as the Trump White House does, is by its own admission a stretch. Mische’s analysis blames at least some of the state’s gasoline production constraints on a Feb. 1, 2025, fire that kept a Martinez refinery fully or partially offline until late that year. A fire at a second Martinez refinery occurred in November 2023, and that refinery still hasn’t fully recovered.

California domestic oil production, which fell to 110.6 million barrels in 2025, has been declining since 1986, when it peaked at more than 402 million barrels. The decline is due in part to depleted wells and to environmental regulations that make drilling in California more expensive than elsewhere, for petroleum that fetches a lower price on international markets than oil from Texas or New Mexico.

As it happens, the Newsom administration has been somewhat more tolerant of increased onshore production than some of its predecessors, streamlining permits for thousands of new wells in Kern County.

Even maximum production from the offshore wells controlled by Sable would have a negligible effect on global oil supplies or prices, according to oil economist Paasha Mahdavi of UC Santa Barbara, whose analysis was filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by environmental groups fighting the pipeline restart.

The highest estimates of the oil that could flow through the pipelines from Sables’ offshore platforms — more than 60,000 barrels a day — would barely move the needle on U.S. resources, especially considering that the U.S. already produces so much oil it’s a net exporter of the black gold.

That underscores how so much of the Trump administration’s campaigning for the Sable pipeline reflects partisan politics more than the demands of national security. Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed back against the Trump rhetoric about what the Energy Department termed “California’s war on American energy” by snapping that “no drop in the bucket like Sable can make up for Trump’s war choking off a fifth of the world’s oil supply” by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

It’s also true that one important reason why California’s gas prices are generally higher than those in the U.S. is that this state’s policies fostering low emissions and clean air come at a cost — and one that the state’s voters generally favor. These include cap-and-trade rules that discourage polluters but add an estimated 5% to prices at the pump, and requirements for gasoline formulations that reduce pollution, also at a 5% cost.

Put it all together, however, and the truth remains that the largest component of gas prices in California is the price of crude oil, which has soared from about $55 a barrel at the beginning of the year to as much as $114 this month. That’s an artifact of Trump policies, not California. And it won’t be helped by putting more oil through a pipeline that has had a checkered record for safety.

Oil companies aren’t known for playing nice with their adversaries. Put them together with the Trump administration’s reliance on bullying to get its way, and watch the public interest get trampled.

That is what’s happening with an effort by Sable Offshore Corp., a Houston oil company, to restart a California oil pipeline system that has been fallow since 2015, when a leak from a corroded line spilled nearly 143,000 gallons of crude oil, fouling miles of the Santa Barbara coastline, including several marine preserves.

Actually, the pipelines actually have already been restarted, thanks to a March 13 Trump administration order that cited “national security” as a rationale for preempting not merely state laws and regulations, but a 2020 consent decree that was agreed on by the federal government. The consent decree set forth numerous procedural and operational safeguards to be met before the pipelines could be restarted.

Sable acquired the pipeline system in 2024, but acknowledges that it’s subject to the consent decree.

Sable says that it has met all the requirements of the consent decree, having spent more than $100 million on repairs and upgrades. The obstacle to restarting the lines, it has said, is the Newsom administration. Accordingly, it sought President Trump’s help in defeating the state.

That assistance arrived on March 13 from the Department of Energy, which invoked the Cold War-era Defense Production Act in ordering oil production from Sable’s offshore platforms and its pipelines to resume immediately. Sable immediately complied, and oil has been flowing ever since, despite state orders to keep the system shut down.

It shouldn’t be surprising that this battle has generated reams of litigation, as my colleague Grace Toohey has monitored assiduously. The latest development came April 17 in Santa Barbara state court, where Judge Donna Geck ruled that the injunction she issued in July 2025 blocking the pipeline restart remains in effect — denying the government’s claim that its Defense Production Act order preempted her injunction and the consent decree.

A further hearing on the matter is scheduled for May 22, when environmental groups will ask Geck to find Sable in contempt of court for starting up the pipelines without required state permission.

Sable says it’s in the clear.

“We believe we’re not in contempt of court and have immunity from this action,” the oil company’s outside counsel, Jeffrey Dintzer of Los Angeles, told me, citing the preemption afforded the Defense Production Act over state and local regulations.

The so-called Refugio oil spill of 2015 evoked memories of the Santa Barbara spill of 1969, which turbocharged a nascent environmental movement and helped launch Earth Day as an annual event. (This year it’s celebrated on Wednesday.) The Refugio spill was much smaller than its 1969 predecessor but may have been even more environmentally damaging, since it contaminated four marine protected areas.

The pipeline system that spilled the oil was acquired in 2022 by ExxonMobil and in 2024 by Sable, which hadn’t recorded revenues from the operation through most of the first quarter of this year. Sable announced on March 30 that it was starting oil sales from the system, but hasn’t disclosed any revenues.

Sable’s very existence is tied in with the restart of the pipeline system, according to its financial disclosures. The company reported a loss of more than $410 million last year, citing restart-related expenses and interest payments.

The consent decree vested oversight of the pipelines in the state, on grounds that the lines are intrastate facilities and therefore not subject to federal regulation.

Last year, at Sable’s instigation, the Trump administration redesignated the system as interstate. In other words, it gave itself the authority to assume oversight, specifically through the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a unit of the Department of Transportation.

That step has come under a double-pincer assault by the state and environmental groups in Los Angeles federal court and the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The federal redesignation was based on the idea that because the oil being fed into the pipelines was extracted from an offshore platform sitting in federal waters, the whole system is interstate — a “novel theory,” to quote the state’s Los Angeles lawsuit.

“The pipelines very clearly begin and end within state lines,” says Talia Nimmer, a lawyer at the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental plaintiffs in the federal cases. “They begin in Santa Barbara County and end in Kern County.”

The government’s national security claim rests on the assertion that since California is host to more than 30 military installations, its anti-petroleum policies and politic and its reliance on foreign oil supplies — which account for more than 60% of consumption— “compromise U.S. force readiness and national security in times of global oil production stress and supply chain disruption,” as USC economist Michael Mische put it in a market analysis Sable filed in Santa Barbara state court.

The Department of Energy contends that “radical state policies” are responsible for a decline in petroleum production in California. It also blames California’s adherence to the “green new scam,” a phrase I previously labeled as “an infantile reference,” to policies incorporating a transition from fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal to renewables.

To say the least, the government has some nerve in raising the issue. The biggest threat to the international oil supply, including the oil California imports from the Middle East, is Trump’s Iran war, which shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20% of global oil, or 21 million barrels a day, passes.

That was true on March 13, or two weeks before Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued the Defense Production Act order and justified it by wringing his hands over California’s green policies.

In any event, ascribing the oil crisis to California politics, as the Trump White House does, is by its own admission a stretch. Mische’s analysis blames at least some of the state’s gasoline production constraints on a Feb. 1, 2025, fire that kept a Martinez refinery fully or partially offline until late that year. A fire at a second Martinez refinery occurred in November 2023, and that refinery still hasn’t fully recovered.

California domestic oil production, which fell to 110.6 million barrels in 2025, has been declining since 1986, when it peaked at more than 402 million barrels. The decline is due in part to depleted wells and to environmental regulations that make drilling in California more expensive than elsewhere, for petroleum that fetches a lower price on international markets than oil from Texas or New Mexico.

As it happens, the Newsom administration has been somewhat more tolerant of increased onshore production than some of its predecessors, streamlining permits for thousands of new wells in Kern County.

Even maximum production from the offshore wells controlled by Sable would have a negligible effect on global oil supplies or prices, according to oil economist Paasha Mahdavi of UC Santa Barbara, whose analysis was filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by environmental groups fighting the pipeline restart.

The highest estimates of the oil that could flow through the pipelines from Sables’ offshore platforms — more than 60,000 barrels a day — would barely move the needle on U.S. resources, especially considering that the U.S. already produces so much oil it’s a net exporter of the black gold.

That underscores how so much of the Trump administration’s campaigning for the Sable pipeline reflects partisan politics more than the demands of national security. Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed back against the Trump rhetoric about what the Energy Department termed “California’s war on American energy” by snapping that “no drop in the bucket like Sable can make up for Trump’s war choking off a fifth of the world’s oil supply” by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

It’s also true that one important reason why California’s gas prices are generally higher than those in the U.S. is that this state’s policies fostering low emissions and clean air come at a cost — and one that the state’s voters generally favor. These include cap-and-trade rules that discourage polluters but add an estimated 5% to prices at the pump, and requirements for gasoline formulations that reduce pollution, also at a 5% cost.

Put it all together, however, and the truth remains that the largest component of gas prices in California is the price of crude oil, which has soared from about $55 a barrel at the beginning of the year to as much as $114 this month. That’s an artifact of Trump policies, not California. And it won’t be helped by putting more oil through a pipeline that has had a checkered record for safety.

Oil companies aren’t known for playing nice with their adversaries. Put them together with the Trump administration’s reliance on bullying to get its way, and watch the public interest get trampled.

That is what’s happening with an effort by Sable Offshore Corp., a Houston oil company, to restart a California oil pipeline system that has been fallow since 2015, when a leak from a corroded line spilled nearly 143,000 gallons of crude oil, fouling miles of the Santa Barbara coastline, including several marine preserves.

Actually, the pipelines actually have already been restarted, thanks to a March 13 Trump administration order that cited “national security” as a rationale for preempting not merely state laws and regulations, but a 2020 consent decree that was agreed on by the federal government. The consent decree set forth numerous procedural and operational safeguards to be met before the pipelines could be restarted.

Sable acquired the pipeline system in 2024, but acknowledges that it’s subject to the consent decree.

Sable says that it has met all the requirements of the consent decree, having spent more than $100 million on repairs and upgrades. The obstacle to restarting the lines, it has said, is the Newsom administration. Accordingly, it sought President Trump’s help in defeating the state.

That assistance arrived on March 13 from the Department of Energy, which invoked the Cold War-era Defense Production Act in ordering oil production from Sable’s offshore platforms and its pipelines to resume immediately. Sable immediately complied, and oil has been flowing ever since, despite state orders to keep the system shut down.

It shouldn’t be surprising that this battle has generated reams of litigation, as my colleague Grace Toohey has monitored assiduously. The latest development came April 17 in Santa Barbara state court, where Judge Donna Geck ruled that the injunction she issued in July 2025 blocking the pipeline restart remains in effect — denying the government’s claim that its Defense Production Act order preempted her injunction and the consent decree.

A further hearing on the matter is scheduled for May 22, when environmental groups will ask Geck to find Sable in contempt of court for starting up the pipelines without required state permission.

Sable says it’s in the clear.

“We believe we’re not in contempt of court and have immunity from this action,” the oil company’s outside counsel, Jeffrey Dintzer of Los Angeles, told me, citing the preemption afforded the Defense Production Act over state and local regulations.

The so-called Refugio oil spill of 2015 evoked memories of the Santa Barbara spill of 1969, which turbocharged a nascent environmental movement and helped launch Earth Day as an annual event. (This year it’s celebrated on Wednesday.) The Refugio spill was much smaller than its 1969 predecessor but may have been even more environmentally damaging, since it contaminated four marine protected areas.

The pipeline system that spilled the oil was acquired in 2022 by ExxonMobil and in 2024 by Sable, which hadn’t recorded revenues from the operation through most of the first quarter of this year. Sable announced on March 30 that it was starting oil sales from the system, but hasn’t disclosed any revenues.

Sable’s very existence is tied in with the restart of the pipeline system, according to its financial disclosures. The company reported a loss of more than $410 million last year, citing restart-related expenses and interest payments.

The consent decree vested oversight of the pipelines in the state, on grounds that the lines are intrastate facilities and therefore not subject to federal regulation.

Last year, at Sable’s instigation, the Trump administration redesignated the system as interstate. In other words, it gave itself the authority to assume oversight, specifically through the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a unit of the Department of Transportation.

That step has come under a double-pincer assault by the state and environmental groups in Los Angeles federal court and the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The federal redesignation was based on the idea that because the oil being fed into the pipelines was extracted from an offshore platform sitting in federal waters, the whole system is interstate — a “novel theory,” to quote the state’s Los Angeles lawsuit.

“The pipelines very clearly begin and end within state lines,” says Talia Nimmer, a lawyer at the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental plaintiffs in the federal cases. “They begin in Santa Barbara County and end in Kern County.”

The government’s national security claim rests on the assertion that since California is host to more than 30 military installations, its anti-petroleum policies and politic and its reliance on foreign oil supplies — which account for more than 60% of consumption— “compromise U.S. force readiness and national security in times of global oil production stress and supply chain disruption,” as USC economist Michael Mische put it in a market analysis Sable filed in Santa Barbara state court.

The Department of Energy contends that “radical state policies” are responsible for a decline in petroleum production in California. It also blames California’s adherence to the “green new scam,” a phrase I previously labeled as “an infantile reference,” to policies incorporating a transition from fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal to renewables.

To say the least, the government has some nerve in raising the issue. The biggest threat to the international oil supply, including the oil California imports from the Middle East, is Trump’s Iran war, which shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20% of global oil, or 21 million barrels a day, passes.

That was true on March 13, or two weeks before Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued the Defense Production Act order and justified it by wringing his hands over California’s green policies.

In any event, ascribing the oil crisis to California politics, as the Trump White House does, is by its own admission a stretch. Mische’s analysis blames at least some of the state’s gasoline production constraints on a Feb. 1, 2025, fire that kept a Martinez refinery fully or partially offline until late that year. A fire at a second Martinez refinery occurred in November 2023, and that refinery still hasn’t fully recovered.

California domestic oil production, which fell to 110.6 million barrels in 2025, has been declining since 1986, when it peaked at more than 402 million barrels. The decline is due in part to depleted wells and to environmental regulations that make drilling in California more expensive than elsewhere, for petroleum that fetches a lower price on international markets than oil from Texas or New Mexico.

As it happens, the Newsom administration has been somewhat more tolerant of increased onshore production than some of its predecessors, streamlining permits for thousands of new wells in Kern County.

Even maximum production from the offshore wells controlled by Sable would have a negligible effect on global oil supplies or prices, according to oil economist Paasha Mahdavi of UC Santa Barbara, whose analysis was filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by environmental groups fighting the pipeline restart.

The highest estimates of the oil that could flow through the pipelines from Sables’ offshore platforms — more than 60,000 barrels a day — would barely move the needle on U.S. resources, especially considering that the U.S. already produces so much oil it’s a net exporter of the black gold.

That underscores how so much of the Trump administration’s campaigning for the Sable pipeline reflects partisan politics more than the demands of national security. Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed back against the Trump rhetoric about what the Energy Department termed “California’s war on American energy” by snapping that “no drop in the bucket like Sable can make up for Trump’s war choking off a fifth of the world’s oil supply” by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

It’s also true that one important reason why California’s gas prices are generally higher than those in the U.S. is that this state’s policies fostering low emissions and clean air come at a cost — and one that the state’s voters generally favor. These include cap-and-trade rules that discourage polluters but add an estimated 5% to prices at the pump, and requirements for gasoline formulations that reduce pollution, also at a 5% cost.

Put it all together, however, and the truth remains that the largest component of gas prices in California is the price of crude oil, which has soared from about $55 a barrel at the beginning of the year to as much as $114 this month. That’s an artifact of Trump policies, not California. And it won’t be helped by putting more oil through a pipeline that has had a checkered record for safety.

Oil companies aren’t known for playing nice with their adversaries. Put them together with the Trump administration’s reliance on bullying to get its way, and watch the public interest get trampled.

That is what’s happening with an effort by Sable Offshore Corp., a Houston oil company, to restart a California oil pipeline system that has been fallow since 2015, when a leak from a corroded line spilled nearly 143,000 gallons of crude oil, fouling miles of the Santa Barbara coastline, including several marine preserves.

Actually, the pipelines actually have already been restarted, thanks to a March 13 Trump administration order that cited “national security” as a rationale for preempting not merely state laws and regulations, but a 2020 consent decree that was agreed on by the federal government. The consent decree set forth numerous procedural and operational safeguards to be met before the pipelines could be restarted.

Sable acquired the pipeline system in 2024, but acknowledges that it’s subject to the consent decree.

Sable says that it has met all the requirements of the consent decree, having spent more than $100 million on repairs and upgrades. The obstacle to restarting the lines, it has said, is the Newsom administration. Accordingly, it sought President Trump’s help in defeating the state.

That assistance arrived on March 13 from the Department of Energy, which invoked the Cold War-era Defense Production Act in ordering oil production from Sable’s offshore platforms and its pipelines to resume immediately. Sable immediately complied, and oil has been flowing ever since, despite state orders to keep the system shut down.

It shouldn’t be surprising that this battle has generated reams of litigation, as my colleague Grace Toohey has monitored assiduously. The latest development came April 17 in Santa Barbara state court, where Judge Donna Geck ruled that the injunction she issued in July 2025 blocking the pipeline restart remains in effect — denying the government’s claim that its Defense Production Act order preempted her injunction and the consent decree.

A further hearing on the matter is scheduled for May 22, when environmental groups will ask Geck to find Sable in contempt of court for starting up the pipelines without required state permission.

Sable says it’s in the clear.

“We believe we’re not in contempt of court and have immunity from this action,” the oil company’s outside counsel, Jeffrey Dintzer of Los Angeles, told me, citing the preemption afforded the Defense Production Act over state and local regulations.

The so-called Refugio oil spill of 2015 evoked memories of the Santa Barbara spill of 1969, which turbocharged a nascent environmental movement and helped launch Earth Day as an annual event. (This year it’s celebrated on Wednesday.) The Refugio spill was much smaller than its 1969 predecessor but may have been even more environmentally damaging, since it contaminated four marine protected areas.

The pipeline system that spilled the oil was acquired in 2022 by ExxonMobil and in 2024 by Sable, which hadn’t recorded revenues from the operation through most of the first quarter of this year. Sable announced on March 30 that it was starting oil sales from the system, but hasn’t disclosed any revenues.

Sable’s very existence is tied in with the restart of the pipeline system, according to its financial disclosures. The company reported a loss of more than $410 million last year, citing restart-related expenses and interest payments.

The consent decree vested oversight of the pipelines in the state, on grounds that the lines are intrastate facilities and therefore not subject to federal regulation.

Last year, at Sable’s instigation, the Trump administration redesignated the system as interstate. In other words, it gave itself the authority to assume oversight, specifically through the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a unit of the Department of Transportation.

That step has come under a double-pincer assault by the state and environmental groups in Los Angeles federal court and the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The federal redesignation was based on the idea that because the oil being fed into the pipelines was extracted from an offshore platform sitting in federal waters, the whole system is interstate — a “novel theory,” to quote the state’s Los Angeles lawsuit.

“The pipelines very clearly begin and end within state lines,” says Talia Nimmer, a lawyer at the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental plaintiffs in the federal cases. “They begin in Santa Barbara County and end in Kern County.”

The government’s national security claim rests on the assertion that since California is host to more than 30 military installations, its anti-petroleum policies and politic and its reliance on foreign oil supplies — which account for more than 60% of consumption— “compromise U.S. force readiness and national security in times of global oil production stress and supply chain disruption,” as USC economist Michael Mische put it in a market analysis Sable filed in Santa Barbara state court.

The Department of Energy contends that “radical state policies” are responsible for a decline in petroleum production in California. It also blames California’s adherence to the “green new scam,” a phrase I previously labeled as “an infantile reference,” to policies incorporating a transition from fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal to renewables.

To say the least, the government has some nerve in raising the issue. The biggest threat to the international oil supply, including the oil California imports from the Middle East, is Trump’s Iran war, which shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20% of global oil, or 21 million barrels a day, passes.

That was true on March 13, or two weeks before Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued the Defense Production Act order and justified it by wringing his hands over California’s green policies.

In any event, ascribing the oil crisis to California politics, as the Trump White House does, is by its own admission a stretch. Mische’s analysis blames at least some of the state’s gasoline production constraints on a Feb. 1, 2025, fire that kept a Martinez refinery fully or partially offline until late that year. A fire at a second Martinez refinery occurred in November 2023, and that refinery still hasn’t fully recovered.

California domestic oil production, which fell to 110.6 million barrels in 2025, has been declining since 1986, when it peaked at more than 402 million barrels. The decline is due in part to depleted wells and to environmental regulations that make drilling in California more expensive than elsewhere, for petroleum that fetches a lower price on international markets than oil from Texas or New Mexico.

As it happens, the Newsom administration has been somewhat more tolerant of increased onshore production than some of its predecessors, streamlining permits for thousands of new wells in Kern County.

Even maximum production from the offshore wells controlled by Sable would have a negligible effect on global oil supplies or prices, according to oil economist Paasha Mahdavi of UC Santa Barbara, whose analysis was filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by environmental groups fighting the pipeline restart.

The highest estimates of the oil that could flow through the pipelines from Sables’ offshore platforms — more than 60,000 barrels a day — would barely move the needle on U.S. resources, especially considering that the U.S. already produces so much oil it’s a net exporter of the black gold.

That underscores how so much of the Trump administration’s campaigning for the Sable pipeline reflects partisan politics more than the demands of national security. Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed back against the Trump rhetoric about what the Energy Department termed “California’s war on American energy” by snapping that “no drop in the bucket like Sable can make up for Trump’s war choking off a fifth of the world’s oil supply” by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

It’s also true that one important reason why California’s gas prices are generally higher than those in the U.S. is that this state’s policies fostering low emissions and clean air come at a cost — and one that the state’s voters generally favor. These include cap-and-trade rules that discourage polluters but add an estimated 5% to prices at the pump, and requirements for gasoline formulations that reduce pollution, also at a 5% cost.

Put it all together, however, and the truth remains that the largest component of gas prices in California is the price of crude oil, which has soared from about $55 a barrel at the beginning of the year to as much as $114 this month. That’s an artifact of Trump policies, not California. And it won’t be helped by putting more oil through a pipeline that has had a checkered record for safety.

Oil companies aren’t known for playing nice with their adversaries. Put them together with the Trump administration’s reliance on bullying to get its way, and watch the public interest get trampled.

That is what’s happening with an effort by Sable Offshore Corp., a Houston oil company, to restart a California oil pipeline system that has been fallow since 2015, when a leak from a corroded line spilled nearly 143,000 gallons of crude oil, fouling miles of the Santa Barbara coastline, including several marine preserves.

Actually, the pipelines actually have already been restarted, thanks to a March 13 Trump administration order that cited “national security” as a rationale for preempting not merely state laws and regulations, but a 2020 consent decree that was agreed on by the federal government. The consent decree set forth numerous procedural and operational safeguards to be met before the pipelines could be restarted.

Sable acquired the pipeline system in 2024, but acknowledges that it’s subject to the consent decree.

Sable says that it has met all the requirements of the consent decree, having spent more than $100 million on repairs and upgrades. The obstacle to restarting the lines, it has said, is the Newsom administration. Accordingly, it sought President Trump’s help in defeating the state.

That assistance arrived on March 13 from the Department of Energy, which invoked the Cold War-era Defense Production Act in ordering oil production from Sable’s offshore platforms and its pipelines to resume immediately. Sable immediately complied, and oil has been flowing ever since, despite state orders to keep the system shut down.

It shouldn’t be surprising that this battle has generated reams of litigation, as my colleague Grace Toohey has monitored assiduously. The latest development came April 17 in Santa Barbara state court, where Judge Donna Geck ruled that the injunction she issued in July 2025 blocking the pipeline restart remains in effect — denying the government’s claim that its Defense Production Act order preempted her injunction and the consent decree.

A further hearing on the matter is scheduled for May 22, when environmental groups will ask Geck to find Sable in contempt of court for starting up the pipelines without required state permission.

Sable says it’s in the clear.

“We believe we’re not in contempt of court and have immunity from this action,” the oil company’s outside counsel, Jeffrey Dintzer of Los Angeles, told me, citing the preemption afforded the Defense Production Act over state and local regulations.

The so-called Refugio oil spill of 2015 evoked memories of the Santa Barbara spill of 1969, which turbocharged a nascent environmental movement and helped launch Earth Day as an annual event. (This year it’s celebrated on Wednesday.) The Refugio spill was much smaller than its 1969 predecessor but may have been even more environmentally damaging, since it contaminated four marine protected areas.

The pipeline system that spilled the oil was acquired in 2022 by ExxonMobil and in 2024 by Sable, which hadn’t recorded revenues from the operation through most of the first quarter of this year. Sable announced on March 30 that it was starting oil sales from the system, but hasn’t disclosed any revenues.

Sable’s very existence is tied in with the restart of the pipeline system, according to its financial disclosures. The company reported a loss of more than $410 million last year, citing restart-related expenses and interest payments.

The consent decree vested oversight of the pipelines in the state, on grounds that the lines are intrastate facilities and therefore not subject to federal regulation.

Last year, at Sable’s instigation, the Trump administration redesignated the system as interstate. In other words, it gave itself the authority to assume oversight, specifically through the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a unit of the Department of Transportation.

That step has come under a double-pincer assault by the state and environmental groups in Los Angeles federal court and the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The federal redesignation was based on the idea that because the oil being fed into the pipelines was extracted from an offshore platform sitting in federal waters, the whole system is interstate — a “novel theory,” to quote the state’s Los Angeles lawsuit.

“The pipelines very clearly begin and end within state lines,” says Talia Nimmer, a lawyer at the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental plaintiffs in the federal cases. “They begin in Santa Barbara County and end in Kern County.”

The government’s national security claim rests on the assertion that since California is host to more than 30 military installations, its anti-petroleum policies and politic and its reliance on foreign oil supplies — which account for more than 60% of consumption— “compromise U.S. force readiness and national security in times of global oil production stress and supply chain disruption,” as USC economist Michael Mische put it in a market analysis Sable filed in Santa Barbara state court.

The Department of Energy contends that “radical state policies” are responsible for a decline in petroleum production in California. It also blames California’s adherence to the “green new scam,” a phrase I previously labeled as “an infantile reference,” to policies incorporating a transition from fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal to renewables.

To say the least, the government has some nerve in raising the issue. The biggest threat to the international oil supply, including the oil California imports from the Middle East, is Trump’s Iran war, which shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20% of global oil, or 21 million barrels a day, passes.

That was true on March 13, or two weeks before Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued the Defense Production Act order and justified it by wringing his hands over California’s green policies.

In any event, ascribing the oil crisis to California politics, as the Trump White House does, is by its own admission a stretch. Mische’s analysis blames at least some of the state’s gasoline production constraints on a Feb. 1, 2025, fire that kept a Martinez refinery fully or partially offline until late that year. A fire at a second Martinez refinery occurred in November 2023, and that refinery still hasn’t fully recovered.

California domestic oil production, which fell to 110.6 million barrels in 2025, has been declining since 1986, when it peaked at more than 402 million barrels. The decline is due in part to depleted wells and to environmental regulations that make drilling in California more expensive than elsewhere, for petroleum that fetches a lower price on international markets than oil from Texas or New Mexico.

As it happens, the Newsom administration has been somewhat more tolerant of increased onshore production than some of its predecessors, streamlining permits for thousands of new wells in Kern County.

Even maximum production from the offshore wells controlled by Sable would have a negligible effect on global oil supplies or prices, according to oil economist Paasha Mahdavi of UC Santa Barbara, whose analysis was filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by environmental groups fighting the pipeline restart.

The highest estimates of the oil that could flow through the pipelines from Sables’ offshore platforms — more than 60,000 barrels a day — would barely move the needle on U.S. resources, especially considering that the U.S. already produces so much oil it’s a net exporter of the black gold.

That underscores how so much of the Trump administration’s campaigning for the Sable pipeline reflects partisan politics more than the demands of national security. Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed back against the Trump rhetoric about what the Energy Department termed “California’s war on American energy” by snapping that “no drop in the bucket like Sable can make up for Trump’s war choking off a fifth of the world’s oil supply” by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

It’s also true that one important reason why California’s gas prices are generally higher than those in the U.S. is that this state’s policies fostering low emissions and clean air come at a cost — and one that the state’s voters generally favor. These include cap-and-trade rules that discourage polluters but add an estimated 5% to prices at the pump, and requirements for gasoline formulations that reduce pollution, also at a 5% cost.

Put it all together, however, and the truth remains that the largest component of gas prices in California is the price of crude oil, which has soared from about $55 a barrel at the beginning of the year to as much as $114 this month. That’s an artifact of Trump policies, not California. And it won’t be helped by putting more oil through a pipeline that has had a checkered record for safety.

Oil companies aren’t known for playing nice with their adversaries. Put them together with the Trump administration’s reliance on bullying to get its way, and watch the public interest get trampled.

That is what’s happening with an effort by Sable Offshore Corp., a Houston oil company, to restart a California oil pipeline system that has been fallow since 2015, when a leak from a corroded line spilled nearly 143,000 gallons of crude oil, fouling miles of the Santa Barbara coastline, including several marine preserves.

Actually, the pipelines actually have already been restarted, thanks to a March 13 Trump administration order that cited “national security” as a rationale for preempting not merely state laws and regulations, but a 2020 consent decree that was agreed on by the federal government. The consent decree set forth numerous procedural and operational safeguards to be met before the pipelines could be restarted.

Sable acquired the pipeline system in 2024, but acknowledges that it’s subject to the consent decree.

Sable says that it has met all the requirements of the consent decree, having spent more than $100 million on repairs and upgrades. The obstacle to restarting the lines, it has said, is the Newsom administration. Accordingly, it sought President Trump’s help in defeating the state.

That assistance arrived on March 13 from the Department of Energy, which invoked the Cold War-era Defense Production Act in ordering oil production from Sable’s offshore platforms and its pipelines to resume immediately. Sable immediately complied, and oil has been flowing ever since, despite state orders to keep the system shut down.

It shouldn’t be surprising that this battle has generated reams of litigation, as my colleague Grace Toohey has monitored assiduously. The latest development came April 17 in Santa Barbara state court, where Judge Donna Geck ruled that the injunction she issued in July 2025 blocking the pipeline restart remains in effect — denying the government’s claim that its Defense Production Act order preempted her injunction and the consent decree.

A further hearing on the matter is scheduled for May 22, when environmental groups will ask Geck to find Sable in contempt of court for starting up the pipelines without required state permission.

Sable says it’s in the clear.

“We believe we’re not in contempt of court and have immunity from this action,” the oil company’s outside counsel, Jeffrey Dintzer of Los Angeles, told me, citing the preemption afforded the Defense Production Act over state and local regulations.

The so-called Refugio oil spill of 2015 evoked memories of the Santa Barbara spill of 1969, which turbocharged a nascent environmental movement and helped launch Earth Day as an annual event. (This year it’s celebrated on Wednesday.) The Refugio spill was much smaller than its 1969 predecessor but may have been even more environmentally damaging, since it contaminated four marine protected areas.

The pipeline system that spilled the oil was acquired in 2022 by ExxonMobil and in 2024 by Sable, which hadn’t recorded revenues from the operation through most of the first quarter of this year. Sable announced on March 30 that it was starting oil sales from the system, but hasn’t disclosed any revenues.

Sable’s very existence is tied in with the restart of the pipeline system, according to its financial disclosures. The company reported a loss of more than $410 million last year, citing restart-related expenses and interest payments.

The consent decree vested oversight of the pipelines in the state, on grounds that the lines are intrastate facilities and therefore not subject to federal regulation.

Last year, at Sable’s instigation, the Trump administration redesignated the system as interstate. In other words, it gave itself the authority to assume oversight, specifically through the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a unit of the Department of Transportation.

That step has come under a double-pincer assault by the state and environmental groups in Los Angeles federal court and the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The federal redesignation was based on the idea that because the oil being fed into the pipelines was extracted from an offshore platform sitting in federal waters, the whole system is interstate — a “novel theory,” to quote the state’s Los Angeles lawsuit.

“The pipelines very clearly begin and end within state lines,” says Talia Nimmer, a lawyer at the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental plaintiffs in the federal cases. “They begin in Santa Barbara County and end in Kern County.”

The government’s national security claim rests on the assertion that since California is host to more than 30 military installations, its anti-petroleum policies and politic and its reliance on foreign oil supplies — which account for more than 60% of consumption— “compromise U.S. force readiness and national security in times of global oil production stress and supply chain disruption,” as USC economist Michael Mische put it in a market analysis Sable filed in Santa Barbara state court.

The Department of Energy contends that “radical state policies” are responsible for a decline in petroleum production in California. It also blames California’s adherence to the “green new scam,” a phrase I previously labeled as “an infantile reference,” to policies incorporating a transition from fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal to renewables.

To say the least, the government has some nerve in raising the issue. The biggest threat to the international oil supply, including the oil California imports from the Middle East, is Trump’s Iran war, which shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20% of global oil, or 21 million barrels a day, passes.

That was true on March 13, or two weeks before Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued the Defense Production Act order and justified it by wringing his hands over California’s green policies.

In any event, ascribing the oil crisis to California politics, as the Trump White House does, is by its own admission a stretch. Mische’s analysis blames at least some of the state’s gasoline production constraints on a Feb. 1, 2025, fire that kept a Martinez refinery fully or partially offline until late that year. A fire at a second Martinez refinery occurred in November 2023, and that refinery still hasn’t fully recovered.

California domestic oil production, which fell to 110.6 million barrels in 2025, has been declining since 1986, when it peaked at more than 402 million barrels. The decline is due in part to depleted wells and to environmental regulations that make drilling in California more expensive than elsewhere, for petroleum that fetches a lower price on international markets than oil from Texas or New Mexico.

As it happens, the Newsom administration has been somewhat more tolerant of increased onshore production than some of its predecessors, streamlining permits for thousands of new wells in Kern County.

Even maximum production from the offshore wells controlled by Sable would have a negligible effect on global oil supplies or prices, according to oil economist Paasha Mahdavi of UC Santa Barbara, whose analysis was filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by environmental groups fighting the pipeline restart.

The highest estimates of the oil that could flow through the pipelines from Sables’ offshore platforms — more than 60,000 barrels a day — would barely move the needle on U.S. resources, especially considering that the U.S. already produces so much oil it’s a net exporter of the black gold.

That underscores how so much of the Trump administration’s campaigning for the Sable pipeline reflects partisan politics more than the demands of national security. Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed back against the Trump rhetoric about what the Energy Department termed “California’s war on American energy” by snapping that “no drop in the bucket like Sable can make up for Trump’s war choking off a fifth of the world’s oil supply” by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

It’s also true that one important reason why California’s gas prices are generally higher than those in the U.S. is that this state’s policies fostering low emissions and clean air come at a cost — and one that the state’s voters generally favor. These include cap-and-trade rules that discourage polluters but add an estimated 5% to prices at the pump, and requirements for gasoline formulations that reduce pollution, also at a 5% cost.

Put it all together, however, and the truth remains that the largest component of gas prices in California is the price of crude oil, which has soared from about $55 a barrel at the beginning of the year to as much as $114 this month. That’s an artifact of Trump policies, not California. And it won’t be helped by putting more oil through a pipeline that has had a checkered record for safety.

Oil companies aren’t known for playing nice with their adversaries. Put them together with the Trump administration’s reliance on bullying to get its way, and watch the public interest get trampled.

That is what’s happening with an effort by Sable Offshore Corp., a Houston oil company, to restart a California oil pipeline system that has been fallow since 2015, when a leak from a corroded line spilled nearly 143,000 gallons of crude oil, fouling miles of the Santa Barbara coastline, including several marine preserves.

Actually, the pipelines actually have already been restarted, thanks to a March 13 Trump administration order that cited “national security” as a rationale for preempting not merely state laws and regulations, but a 2020 consent decree that was agreed on by the federal government. The consent decree set forth numerous procedural and operational safeguards to be met before the pipelines could be restarted.

Sable acquired the pipeline system in 2024, but acknowledges that it’s subject to the consent decree.

Sable says that it has met all the requirements of the consent decree, having spent more than $100 million on repairs and upgrades. The obstacle to restarting the lines, it has said, is the Newsom administration. Accordingly, it sought President Trump’s help in defeating the state.

That assistance arrived on March 13 from the Department of Energy, which invoked the Cold War-era Defense Production Act in ordering oil production from Sable’s offshore platforms and its pipelines to resume immediately. Sable immediately complied, and oil has been flowing ever since, despite state orders to keep the system shut down.

It shouldn’t be surprising that this battle has generated reams of litigation, as my colleague Grace Toohey has monitored assiduously. The latest development came April 17 in Santa Barbara state court, where Judge Donna Geck ruled that the injunction she issued in July 2025 blocking the pipeline restart remains in effect — denying the government’s claim that its Defense Production Act order preempted her injunction and the consent decree.

A further hearing on the matter is scheduled for May 22, when environmental groups will ask Geck to find Sable in contempt of court for starting up the pipelines without required state permission.

Sable says it’s in the clear.

“We believe we’re not in contempt of court and have immunity from this action,” the oil company’s outside counsel, Jeffrey Dintzer of Los Angeles, told me, citing the preemption afforded the Defense Production Act over state and local regulations.

The so-called Refugio oil spill of 2015 evoked memories of the Santa Barbara spill of 1969, which turbocharged a nascent environmental movement and helped launch Earth Day as an annual event. (This year it’s celebrated on Wednesday.) The Refugio spill was much smaller than its 1969 predecessor but may have been even more environmentally damaging, since it contaminated four marine protected areas.

The pipeline system that spilled the oil was acquired in 2022 by ExxonMobil and in 2024 by Sable, which hadn’t recorded revenues from the operation through most of the first quarter of this year. Sable announced on March 30 that it was starting oil sales from the system, but hasn’t disclosed any revenues.

Sable’s very existence is tied in with the restart of the pipeline system, according to its financial disclosures. The company reported a loss of more than $410 million last year, citing restart-related expenses and interest payments.

The consent decree vested oversight of the pipelines in the state, on grounds that the lines are intrastate facilities and therefore not subject to federal regulation.

Last year, at Sable’s instigation, the Trump administration redesignated the system as interstate. In other words, it gave itself the authority to assume oversight, specifically through the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a unit of the Department of Transportation.

That step has come under a double-pincer assault by the state and environmental groups in Los Angeles federal court and the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The federal redesignation was based on the idea that because the oil being fed into the pipelines was extracted from an offshore platform sitting in federal waters, the whole system is interstate — a “novel theory,” to quote the state’s Los Angeles lawsuit.

“The pipelines very clearly begin and end within state lines,” says Talia Nimmer, a lawyer at the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental plaintiffs in the federal cases. “They begin in Santa Barbara County and end in Kern County.”

The government’s national security claim rests on the assertion that since California is host to more than 30 military installations, its anti-petroleum policies and politic and its reliance on foreign oil supplies — which account for more than 60% of consumption— “compromise U.S. force readiness and national security in times of global oil production stress and supply chain disruption,” as USC economist Michael Mische put it in a market analysis Sable filed in Santa Barbara state court.

The Department of Energy contends that “radical state policies” are responsible for a decline in petroleum production in California. It also blames California’s adherence to the “green new scam,” a phrase I previously labeled as “an infantile reference,” to policies incorporating a transition from fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal to renewables.

To say the least, the government has some nerve in raising the issue. The biggest threat to the international oil supply, including the oil California imports from the Middle East, is Trump’s Iran war, which shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20% of global oil, or 21 million barrels a day, passes.

That was true on March 13, or two weeks before Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued the Defense Production Act order and justified it by wringing his hands over California’s green policies.

In any event, ascribing the oil crisis to California politics, as the Trump White House does, is by its own admission a stretch. Mische’s analysis blames at least some of the state’s gasoline production constraints on a Feb. 1, 2025, fire that kept a Martinez refinery fully or partially offline until late that year. A fire at a second Martinez refinery occurred in November 2023, and that refinery still hasn’t fully recovered.

California domestic oil production, which fell to 110.6 million barrels in 2025, has been declining since 1986, when it peaked at more than 402 million barrels. The decline is due in part to depleted wells and to environmental regulations that make drilling in California more expensive than elsewhere, for petroleum that fetches a lower price on international markets than oil from Texas or New Mexico.

As it happens, the Newsom administration has been somewhat more tolerant of increased onshore production than some of its predecessors, streamlining permits for thousands of new wells in Kern County.

Even maximum production from the offshore wells controlled by Sable would have a negligible effect on global oil supplies or prices, according to oil economist Paasha Mahdavi of UC Santa Barbara, whose analysis was filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by environmental groups fighting the pipeline restart.

The highest estimates of the oil that could flow through the pipelines from Sables’ offshore platforms — more than 60,000 barrels a day — would barely move the needle on U.S. resources, especially considering that the U.S. already produces so much oil it’s a net exporter of the black gold.

That underscores how so much of the Trump administration’s campaigning for the Sable pipeline reflects partisan politics more than the demands of national security. Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed back against the Trump rhetoric about what the Energy Department termed “California’s war on American energy” by snapping that “no drop in the bucket like Sable can make up for Trump’s war choking off a fifth of the world’s oil supply” by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

It’s also true that one important reason why California’s gas prices are generally higher than those in the U.S. is that this state’s policies fostering low emissions and clean air come at a cost — and one that the state’s voters generally favor. These include cap-and-trade rules that discourage polluters but add an estimated 5% to prices at the pump, and requirements for gasoline formulations that reduce pollution, also at a 5% cost.

Put it all together, however, and the truth remains that the largest component of gas prices in California is the price of crude oil, which has soared from about $55 a barrel at the beginning of the year to as much as $114 this month. That’s an artifact of Trump policies, not California. And it won’t be helped by putting more oil through a pipeline that has had a checkered record for safety.

Oil companies aren’t known for playing nice with their adversaries. Put them together with the Trump administration’s reliance on bullying to get its way, and watch the public interest get trampled.

That is what’s happening with an effort by Sable Offshore Corp., a Houston oil company, to restart a California oil pipeline system that has been fallow since 2015, when a leak from a corroded line spilled nearly 143,000 gallons of crude oil, fouling miles of the Santa Barbara coastline, including several marine preserves.

Actually, the pipelines actually have already been restarted, thanks to a March 13 Trump administration order that cited “national security” as a rationale for preempting not merely state laws and regulations, but a 2020 consent decree that was agreed on by the federal government. The consent decree set forth numerous procedural and operational safeguards to be met before the pipelines could be restarted.

Sable acquired the pipeline system in 2024, but acknowledges that it’s subject to the consent decree.

Sable says that it has met all the requirements of the consent decree, having spent more than $100 million on repairs and upgrades. The obstacle to restarting the lines, it has said, is the Newsom administration. Accordingly, it sought President Trump’s help in defeating the state.

That assistance arrived on March 13 from the Department of Energy, which invoked the Cold War-era Defense Production Act in ordering oil production from Sable’s offshore platforms and its pipelines to resume immediately. Sable immediately complied, and oil has been flowing ever since, despite state orders to keep the system shut down.

It shouldn’t be surprising that this battle has generated reams of litigation, as my colleague Grace Toohey has monitored assiduously. The latest development came April 17 in Santa Barbara state court, where Judge Donna Geck ruled that the injunction she issued in July 2025 blocking the pipeline restart remains in effect — denying the government’s claim that its Defense Production Act order preempted her injunction and the consent decree.

A further hearing on the matter is scheduled for May 22, when environmental groups will ask Geck to find Sable in contempt of court for starting up the pipelines without required state permission.

Sable says it’s in the clear.

“We believe we’re not in contempt of court and have immunity from this action,” the oil company’s outside counsel, Jeffrey Dintzer of Los Angeles, told me, citing the preemption afforded the Defense Production Act over state and local regulations.

The so-called Refugio oil spill of 2015 evoked memories of the Santa Barbara spill of 1969, which turbocharged a nascent environmental movement and helped launch Earth Day as an annual event. (This year it’s celebrated on Wednesday.) The Refugio spill was much smaller than its 1969 predecessor but may have been even more environmentally damaging, since it contaminated four marine protected areas.

The pipeline system that spilled the oil was acquired in 2022 by ExxonMobil and in 2024 by Sable, which hadn’t recorded revenues from the operation through most of the first quarter of this year. Sable announced on March 30 that it was starting oil sales from the system, but hasn’t disclosed any revenues.

Sable’s very existence is tied in with the restart of the pipeline system, according to its financial disclosures. The company reported a loss of more than $410 million last year, citing restart-related expenses and interest payments.

The consent decree vested oversight of the pipelines in the state, on grounds that the lines are intrastate facilities and therefore not subject to federal regulation.

Last year, at Sable’s instigation, the Trump administration redesignated the system as interstate. In other words, it gave itself the authority to assume oversight, specifically through the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a unit of the Department of Transportation.

That step has come under a double-pincer assault by the state and environmental groups in Los Angeles federal court and the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The federal redesignation was based on the idea that because the oil being fed into the pipelines was extracted from an offshore platform sitting in federal waters, the whole system is interstate — a “novel theory,” to quote the state’s Los Angeles lawsuit.

“The pipelines very clearly begin and end within state lines,” says Talia Nimmer, a lawyer at the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental plaintiffs in the federal cases. “They begin in Santa Barbara County and end in Kern County.”

The government’s national security claim rests on the assertion that since California is host to more than 30 military installations, its anti-petroleum policies and politic and its reliance on foreign oil supplies — which account for more than 60% of consumption— “compromise U.S. force readiness and national security in times of global oil production stress and supply chain disruption,” as USC economist Michael Mische put it in a market analysis Sable filed in Santa Barbara state court.

The Department of Energy contends that “radical state policies” are responsible for a decline in petroleum production in California. It also blames California’s adherence to the “green new scam,” a phrase I previously labeled as “an infantile reference,” to policies incorporating a transition from fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal to renewables.

To say the least, the government has some nerve in raising the issue. The biggest threat to the international oil supply, including the oil California imports from the Middle East, is Trump’s Iran war, which shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20% of global oil, or 21 million barrels a day, passes.

That was true on March 13, or two weeks before Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued the Defense Production Act order and justified it by wringing his hands over California’s green policies.

In any event, ascribing the oil crisis to California politics, as the Trump White House does, is by its own admission a stretch. Mische’s analysis blames at least some of the state’s gasoline production constraints on a Feb. 1, 2025, fire that kept a Martinez refinery fully or partially offline until late that year. A fire at a second Martinez refinery occurred in November 2023, and that refinery still hasn’t fully recovered.

California domestic oil production, which fell to 110.6 million barrels in 2025, has been declining since 1986, when it peaked at more than 402 million barrels. The decline is due in part to depleted wells and to environmental regulations that make drilling in California more expensive than elsewhere, for petroleum that fetches a lower price on international markets than oil from Texas or New Mexico.

As it happens, the Newsom administration has been somewhat more tolerant of increased onshore production than some of its predecessors, streamlining permits for thousands of new wells in Kern County.

Even maximum production from the offshore wells controlled by Sable would have a negligible effect on global oil supplies or prices, according to oil economist Paasha Mahdavi of UC Santa Barbara, whose analysis was filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by environmental groups fighting the pipeline restart.

The highest estimates of the oil that could flow through the pipelines from Sables’ offshore platforms — more than 60,000 barrels a day — would barely move the needle on U.S. resources, especially considering that the U.S. already produces so much oil it’s a net exporter of the black gold.

That underscores how so much of the Trump administration’s campaigning for the Sable pipeline reflects partisan politics more than the demands of national security. Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed back against the Trump rhetoric about what the Energy Department termed “California’s war on American energy” by snapping that “no drop in the bucket like Sable can make up for Trump’s war choking off a fifth of the world’s oil supply” by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

It’s also true that one important reason why California’s gas prices are generally higher than those in the U.S. is that this state’s policies fostering low emissions and clean air come at a cost — and one that the state’s voters generally favor. These include cap-and-trade rules that discourage polluters but add an estimated 5% to prices at the pump, and requirements for gasoline formulations that reduce pollution, also at a 5% cost.

Put it all together, however, and the truth remains that the largest component of gas prices in California is the price of crude oil, which has soared from about $55 a barrel at the beginning of the year to as much as $114 this month. That’s an artifact of Trump policies, not California. And it won’t be helped by putting more oil through a pipeline that has had a checkered record for safety.

Oil companies aren’t known for playing nice with their adversaries. Put them together with the Trump administration’s reliance on bullying to get its way, and watch the public interest get trampled.

That is what’s happening with an effort by Sable Offshore Corp., a Houston oil company, to restart a California oil pipeline system that has been fallow since 2015, when a leak from a corroded line spilled nearly 143,000 gallons of crude oil, fouling miles of the Santa Barbara coastline, including several marine preserves.

Actually, the pipelines actually have already been restarted, thanks to a March 13 Trump administration order that cited “national security” as a rationale for preempting not merely state laws and regulations, but a 2020 consent decree that was agreed on by the federal government. The consent decree set forth numerous procedural and operational safeguards to be met before the pipelines could be restarted.

Sable acquired the pipeline system in 2024, but acknowledges that it’s subject to the consent decree.

Sable says that it has met all the requirements of the consent decree, having spent more than $100 million on repairs and upgrades. The obstacle to restarting the lines, it has said, is the Newsom administration. Accordingly, it sought President Trump’s help in defeating the state.

That assistance arrived on March 13 from the Department of Energy, which invoked the Cold War-era Defense Production Act in ordering oil production from Sable’s offshore platforms and its pipelines to resume immediately. Sable immediately complied, and oil has been flowing ever since, despite state orders to keep the system shut down.

It shouldn’t be surprising that this battle has generated reams of litigation, as my colleague Grace Toohey has monitored assiduously. The latest development came April 17 in Santa Barbara state court, where Judge Donna Geck ruled that the injunction she issued in July 2025 blocking the pipeline restart remains in effect — denying the government’s claim that its Defense Production Act order preempted her injunction and the consent decree.

A further hearing on the matter is scheduled for May 22, when environmental groups will ask Geck to find Sable in contempt of court for starting up the pipelines without required state permission.

Sable says it’s in the clear.

“We believe we’re not in contempt of court and have immunity from this action,” the oil company’s outside counsel, Jeffrey Dintzer of Los Angeles, told me, citing the preemption afforded the Defense Production Act over state and local regulations.

The so-called Refugio oil spill of 2015 evoked memories of the Santa Barbara spill of 1969, which turbocharged a nascent environmental movement and helped launch Earth Day as an annual event. (This year it’s celebrated on Wednesday.) The Refugio spill was much smaller than its 1969 predecessor but may have been even more environmentally damaging, since it contaminated four marine protected areas.

The pipeline system that spilled the oil was acquired in 2022 by ExxonMobil and in 2024 by Sable, which hadn’t recorded revenues from the operation through most of the first quarter of this year. Sable announced on March 30 that it was starting oil sales from the system, but hasn’t disclosed any revenues.

Sable’s very existence is tied in with the restart of the pipeline system, according to its financial disclosures. The company reported a loss of more than $410 million last year, citing restart-related expenses and interest payments.

The consent decree vested oversight of the pipelines in the state, on grounds that the lines are intrastate facilities and therefore not subject to federal regulation.

Last year, at Sable’s instigation, the Trump administration redesignated the system as interstate. In other words, it gave itself the authority to assume oversight, specifically through the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a unit of the Department of Transportation.

That step has come under a double-pincer assault by the state and environmental groups in Los Angeles federal court and the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The federal redesignation was based on the idea that because the oil being fed into the pipelines was extracted from an offshore platform sitting in federal waters, the whole system is interstate — a “novel theory,” to quote the state’s Los Angeles lawsuit.

“The pipelines very clearly begin and end within state lines,” says Talia Nimmer, a lawyer at the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental plaintiffs in the federal cases. “They begin in Santa Barbara County and end in Kern County.”

The government’s national security claim rests on the assertion that since California is host to more than 30 military installations, its anti-petroleum policies and politic and its reliance on foreign oil supplies — which account for more than 60% of consumption— “compromise U.S. force readiness and national security in times of global oil production stress and supply chain disruption,” as USC economist Michael Mische put it in a market analysis Sable filed in Santa Barbara state court.

The Department of Energy contends that “radical state policies” are responsible for a decline in petroleum production in California. It also blames California’s adherence to the “green new scam,” a phrase I previously labeled as “an infantile reference,” to policies incorporating a transition from fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal to renewables.

To say the least, the government has some nerve in raising the issue. The biggest threat to the international oil supply, including the oil California imports from the Middle East, is Trump’s Iran war, which shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20% of global oil, or 21 million barrels a day, passes.

That was true on March 13, or two weeks before Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued the Defense Production Act order and justified it by wringing his hands over California’s green policies.

In any event, ascribing the oil crisis to California politics, as the Trump White House does, is by its own admission a stretch. Mische’s analysis blames at least some of the state’s gasoline production constraints on a Feb. 1, 2025, fire that kept a Martinez refinery fully or partially offline until late that year. A fire at a second Martinez refinery occurred in November 2023, and that refinery still hasn’t fully recovered.

California domestic oil production, which fell to 110.6 million barrels in 2025, has been declining since 1986, when it peaked at more than 402 million barrels. The decline is due in part to depleted wells and to environmental regulations that make drilling in California more expensive than elsewhere, for petroleum that fetches a lower price on international markets than oil from Texas or New Mexico.

As it happens, the Newsom administration has been somewhat more tolerant of increased onshore production than some of its predecessors, streamlining permits for thousands of new wells in Kern County.

Even maximum production from the offshore wells controlled by Sable would have a negligible effect on global oil supplies or prices, according to oil economist Paasha Mahdavi of UC Santa Barbara, whose analysis was filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by environmental groups fighting the pipeline restart.

The highest estimates of the oil that could flow through the pipelines from Sables’ offshore platforms — more than 60,000 barrels a day — would barely move the needle on U.S. resources, especially considering that the U.S. already produces so much oil it’s a net exporter of the black gold.

That underscores how so much of the Trump administration’s campaigning for the Sable pipeline reflects partisan politics more than the demands of national security. Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed back against the Trump rhetoric about what the Energy Department termed “California’s war on American energy” by snapping that “no drop in the bucket like Sable can make up for Trump’s war choking off a fifth of the world’s oil supply” by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

It’s also true that one important reason why California’s gas prices are generally higher than those in the U.S. is that this state’s policies fostering low emissions and clean air come at a cost — and one that the state’s voters generally favor. These include cap-and-trade rules that discourage polluters but add an estimated 5% to prices at the pump, and requirements for gasoline formulations that reduce pollution, also at a 5% cost.

Put it all together, however, and the truth remains that the largest component of gas prices in California is the price of crude oil, which has soared from about $55 a barrel at the beginning of the year to as much as $114 this month. That’s an artifact of Trump policies, not California. And it won’t be helped by putting more oil through a pipeline that has had a checkered record for safety.

Oil companies aren’t known for playing nice with their adversaries. Put them together with the Trump administration’s reliance on bullying to get its way, and watch the public interest get trampled.

That is what’s happening with an effort by Sable Offshore Corp., a Houston oil company, to restart a California oil pipeline system that has been fallow since 2015, when a leak from a corroded line spilled nearly 143,000 gallons of crude oil, fouling miles of the Santa Barbara coastline, including several marine preserves.

Actually, the pipelines actually have already been restarted, thanks to a March 13 Trump administration order that cited “national security” as a rationale for preempting not merely state laws and regulations, but a 2020 consent decree that was agreed on by the federal government. The consent decree set forth numerous procedural and operational safeguards to be met before the pipelines could be restarted.

Sable acquired the pipeline system in 2024, but acknowledges that it’s subject to the consent decree.

Sable says that it has met all the requirements of the consent decree, having spent more than $100 million on repairs and upgrades. The obstacle to restarting the lines, it has said, is the Newsom administration. Accordingly, it sought President Trump’s help in defeating the state.

That assistance arrived on March 13 from the Department of Energy, which invoked the Cold War-era Defense Production Act in ordering oil production from Sable’s offshore platforms and its pipelines to resume immediately. Sable immediately complied, and oil has been flowing ever since, despite state orders to keep the system shut down.

It shouldn’t be surprising that this battle has generated reams of litigation, as my colleague Grace Toohey has monitored assiduously. The latest development came April 17 in Santa Barbara state court, where Judge Donna Geck ruled that the injunction she issued in July 2025 blocking the pipeline restart remains in effect — denying the government’s claim that its Defense Production Act order preempted her injunction and the consent decree.

A further hearing on the matter is scheduled for May 22, when environmental groups will ask Geck to find Sable in contempt of court for starting up the pipelines without required state permission.

Sable says it’s in the clear.

“We believe we’re not in contempt of court and have immunity from this action,” the oil company’s outside counsel, Jeffrey Dintzer of Los Angeles, told me, citing the preemption afforded the Defense Production Act over state and local regulations.

The so-called Refugio oil spill of 2015 evoked memories of the Santa Barbara spill of 1969, which turbocharged a nascent environmental movement and helped launch Earth Day as an annual event. (This year it’s celebrated on Wednesday.) The Refugio spill was much smaller than its 1969 predecessor but may have been even more environmentally damaging, since it contaminated four marine protected areas.

The pipeline system that spilled the oil was acquired in 2022 by ExxonMobil and in 2024 by Sable, which hadn’t recorded revenues from the operation through most of the first quarter of this year. Sable announced on March 30 that it was starting oil sales from the system, but hasn’t disclosed any revenues.

Sable’s very existence is tied in with the restart of the pipeline system, according to its financial disclosures. The company reported a loss of more than $410 million last year, citing restart-related expenses and interest payments.

The consent decree vested oversight of the pipelines in the state, on grounds that the lines are intrastate facilities and therefore not subject to federal regulation.

Last year, at Sable’s instigation, the Trump administration redesignated the system as interstate. In other words, it gave itself the authority to assume oversight, specifically through the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a unit of the Department of Transportation.

That step has come under a double-pincer assault by the state and environmental groups in Los Angeles federal court and the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The federal redesignation was based on the idea that because the oil being fed into the pipelines was extracted from an offshore platform sitting in federal waters, the whole system is interstate — a “novel theory,” to quote the state’s Los Angeles lawsuit.

“The pipelines very clearly begin and end within state lines,” says Talia Nimmer, a lawyer at the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental plaintiffs in the federal cases. “They begin in Santa Barbara County and end in Kern County.”

The government’s national security claim rests on the assertion that since California is host to more than 30 military installations, its anti-petroleum policies and politic and its reliance on foreign oil supplies — which account for more than 60% of consumption— “compromise U.S. force readiness and national security in times of global oil production stress and supply chain disruption,” as USC economist Michael Mische put it in a market analysis Sable filed in Santa Barbara state court.

The Department of Energy contends that “radical state policies” are responsible for a decline in petroleum production in California. It also blames California’s adherence to the “green new scam,” a phrase I previously labeled as “an infantile reference,” to policies incorporating a transition from fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal to renewables.

To say the least, the government has some nerve in raising the issue. The biggest threat to the international oil supply, including the oil California imports from the Middle East, is Trump’s Iran war, which shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20% of global oil, or 21 million barrels a day, passes.

That was true on March 13, or two weeks before Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued the Defense Production Act order and justified it by wringing his hands over California’s green policies.

In any event, ascribing the oil crisis to California politics, as the Trump White House does, is by its own admission a stretch. Mische’s analysis blames at least some of the state’s gasoline production constraints on a Feb. 1, 2025, fire that kept a Martinez refinery fully or partially offline until late that year. A fire at a second Martinez refinery occurred in November 2023, and that refinery still hasn’t fully recovered.

California domestic oil production, which fell to 110.6 million barrels in 2025, has been declining since 1986, when it peaked at more than 402 million barrels. The decline is due in part to depleted wells and to environmental regulations that make drilling in California more expensive than elsewhere, for petroleum that fetches a lower price on international markets than oil from Texas or New Mexico.

As it happens, the Newsom administration has been somewhat more tolerant of increased onshore production than some of its predecessors, streamlining permits for thousands of new wells in Kern County.

Even maximum production from the offshore wells controlled by Sable would have a negligible effect on global oil supplies or prices, according to oil economist Paasha Mahdavi of UC Santa Barbara, whose analysis was filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by environmental groups fighting the pipeline restart.

The highest estimates of the oil that could flow through the pipelines from Sables’ offshore platforms — more than 60,000 barrels a day — would barely move the needle on U.S. resources, especially considering that the U.S. already produces so much oil it’s a net exporter of the black gold.

That underscores how so much of the Trump administration’s campaigning for the Sable pipeline reflects partisan politics more than the demands of national security. Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed back against the Trump rhetoric about what the Energy Department termed “California’s war on American energy” by snapping that “no drop in the bucket like Sable can make up for Trump’s war choking off a fifth of the world’s oil supply” by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

It’s also true that one important reason why California’s gas prices are generally higher than those in the U.S. is that this state’s policies fostering low emissions and clean air come at a cost — and one that the state’s voters generally favor. These include cap-and-trade rules that discourage polluters but add an estimated 5% to prices at the pump, and requirements for gasoline formulations that reduce pollution, also at a 5% cost.

Put it all together, however, and the truth remains that the largest component of gas prices in California is the price of crude oil, which has soared from about $55 a barrel at the beginning of the year to as much as $114 this month. That’s an artifact of Trump policies, not California. And it won’t be helped by putting more oil through a pipeline that has had a checkered record for safety.

Oil companies aren’t known for playing nice with their adversaries. Put them together with the Trump administration’s reliance on bullying to get its way, and watch the public interest get trampled.

That is what’s happening with an effort by Sable Offshore Corp., a Houston oil company, to restart a California oil pipeline system that has been fallow since 2015, when a leak from a corroded line spilled nearly 143,000 gallons of crude oil, fouling miles of the Santa Barbara coastline, including several marine preserves.

Actually, the pipelines actually have already been restarted, thanks to a March 13 Trump administration order that cited “national security” as a rationale for preempting not merely state laws and regulations, but a 2020 consent decree that was agreed on by the federal government. The consent decree set forth numerous procedural and operational safeguards to be met before the pipelines could be restarted.

Sable acquired the pipeline system in 2024, but acknowledges that it’s subject to the consent decree.

Sable says that it has met all the requirements of the consent decree, having spent more than $100 million on repairs and upgrades. The obstacle to restarting the lines, it has said, is the Newsom administration. Accordingly, it sought President Trump’s help in defeating the state.

That assistance arrived on March 13 from the Department of Energy, which invoked the Cold War-era Defense Production Act in ordering oil production from Sable’s offshore platforms and its pipelines to resume immediately. Sable immediately complied, and oil has been flowing ever since, despite state orders to keep the system shut down.

It shouldn’t be surprising that this battle has generated reams of litigation, as my colleague Grace Toohey has monitored assiduously. The latest development came April 17 in Santa Barbara state court, where Judge Donna Geck ruled that the injunction she issued in July 2025 blocking the pipeline restart remains in effect — denying the government’s claim that its Defense Production Act order preempted her injunction and the consent decree.

A further hearing on the matter is scheduled for May 22, when environmental groups will ask Geck to find Sable in contempt of court for starting up the pipelines without required state permission.

Sable says it’s in the clear.

“We believe we’re not in contempt of court and have immunity from this action,” the oil company’s outside counsel, Jeffrey Dintzer of Los Angeles, told me, citing the preemption afforded the Defense Production Act over state and local regulations.

The so-called Refugio oil spill of 2015 evoked memories of the Santa Barbara spill of 1969, which turbocharged a nascent environmental movement and helped launch Earth Day as an annual event. (This year it’s celebrated on Wednesday.) The Refugio spill was much smaller than its 1969 predecessor but may have been even more environmentally damaging, since it contaminated four marine protected areas.

The pipeline system that spilled the oil was acquired in 2022 by ExxonMobil and in 2024 by Sable, which hadn’t recorded revenues from the operation through most of the first quarter of this year. Sable announced on March 30 that it was starting oil sales from the system, but hasn’t disclosed any revenues.

Sable’s very existence is tied in with the restart of the pipeline system, according to its financial disclosures. The company reported a loss of more than $410 million last year, citing restart-related expenses and interest payments.

The consent decree vested oversight of the pipelines in the state, on grounds that the lines are intrastate facilities and therefore not subject to federal regulation.

Last year, at Sable’s instigation, the Trump administration redesignated the system as interstate. In other words, it gave itself the authority to assume oversight, specifically through the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a unit of the Department of Transportation.

That step has come under a double-pincer assault by the state and environmental groups in Los Angeles federal court and the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco. The federal redesignation was based on the idea that because the oil being fed into the pipelines was extracted from an offshore platform sitting in federal waters, the whole system is interstate — a “novel theory,” to quote the state’s Los Angeles lawsuit.

“The pipelines very clearly begin and end within state lines,” says Talia Nimmer, a lawyer at the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, one of the environmental plaintiffs in the federal cases. “They begin in Santa Barbara County and end in Kern County.”

The government’s national security claim rests on the assertion that since California is host to more than 30 military installations, its anti-petroleum policies and politic and its reliance on foreign oil supplies — which account for more than 60% of consumption— “compromise U.S. force readiness and national security in times of global oil production stress and supply chain disruption,” as USC economist Michael Mische put it in a market analysis Sable filed in Santa Barbara state court.

The Department of Energy contends that “radical state policies” are responsible for a decline in petroleum production in California. It also blames California’s adherence to the “green new scam,” a phrase I previously labeled as “an infantile reference,” to policies incorporating a transition from fossil fuels such as oil, gas and coal to renewables.

To say the least, the government has some nerve in raising the issue. The biggest threat to the international oil supply, including the oil California imports from the Middle East, is Trump’s Iran war, which shut down the Strait of Hormuz, through which some 20% of global oil, or 21 million barrels a day, passes.

That was true on March 13, or two weeks before Energy Secretary Chris Wright issued the Defense Production Act order and justified it by wringing his hands over California’s green policies.

In any event, ascribing the oil crisis to California politics, as the Trump White House does, is by its own admission a stretch. Mische’s analysis blames at least some of the state’s gasoline production constraints on a Feb. 1, 2025, fire that kept a Martinez refinery fully or partially offline until late that year. A fire at a second Martinez refinery occurred in November 2023, and that refinery still hasn’t fully recovered.

California domestic oil production, which fell to 110.6 million barrels in 2025, has been declining since 1986, when it peaked at more than 402 million barrels. The decline is due in part to depleted wells and to environmental regulations that make drilling in California more expensive than elsewhere, for petroleum that fetches a lower price on international markets than oil from Texas or New Mexico.

As it happens, the Newsom administration has been somewhat more tolerant of increased onshore production than some of its predecessors, streamlining permits for thousands of new wells in Kern County.

Even maximum production from the offshore wells controlled by Sable would have a negligible effect on global oil supplies or prices, according to oil economist Paasha Mahdavi of UC Santa Barbara, whose analysis was filed in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals by environmental groups fighting the pipeline restart.

The highest estimates of the oil that could flow through the pipelines from Sables’ offshore platforms — more than 60,000 barrels a day — would barely move the needle on U.S. resources, especially considering that the U.S. already produces so much oil it’s a net exporter of the black gold.

That underscores how so much of the Trump administration’s campaigning for the Sable pipeline reflects partisan politics more than the demands of national security. Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed back against the Trump rhetoric about what the Energy Department termed “California’s war on American energy” by snapping that “no drop in the bucket like Sable can make up for Trump’s war choking off a fifth of the world’s oil supply” by closing the Strait of Hormuz.

It’s also true that one important reason why California’s gas prices are generally higher than those in the U.S. is that this state’s policies fostering low emissions and clean air come at a cost — and one that the state’s voters generally favor. These include cap-and-trade rules that discourage polluters but add an estimated 5% to prices at the pump, and requirements for gasoline formulations that reduce pollution, also at a 5% cost.

Put it all together, however, and the truth remains that the largest component of gas prices in California is the price of crude oil, which has soared from about $55 a barrel at the beginning of the year to as much as $114 this month. That’s an artifact of Trump policies, not California. And it won’t be helped by putting more oil through a pipeline that has had a checkered record for safety.