Sable Offshore Submits Official Restart Plan and Requests Alternative Transport Method
SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, Calif. (KEYT) – Sable Offshore, a Houston-based company working to restart oil production since early last year, submitted a formal Request for Approval of Restart Plans to the California Office of State Fire Marshal and requested an alternative way to transport crude oil without further state approvals with the federal government.
The restart request will be reviewed by the Office of State Fire Marshal which still needs to perform final on-site inspections, but the plan represents the final step in resuming operations shared the Office of State Fire Marshal.
A copy of Sable's restart plans for onshore pipelines under the jurisdiction of the Office of State Fire Marshal as well as details about the restart process can be found here.
According to an 8-K filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission this month, the first option is to transport crude oil from Platforms Harmony, Heritage, and Hondo off the Santa Barbara County coastline to the Las Flores Canyon Processing Facility through existing and repaired pipelines collectively called the Santa Ynez Unit.
In May of this year, Sable Offshore announced that oil production had already resumed from six wells on Platform Harmony and the company expected to fill the 540,000 barrels of crude oil storage at the Las Flores Canyon facility by July.
"SOC [Sable Offshore] is proud to have safely and responsibly achieved first production at the Santa Ynez Unit," shared Jim Flores, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Sable Offshore in May. "The impressive well tests from Platform Harmony confirm the prolific nature of the Santa Ynez Unit reservoir after being dormant for ten years. SOC is excited about our development plan and prospects for the future. This milestone achievement is a result of a tremendous amount of effort from all of Sable’s employees, contractors, Board of Directors, stakeholders, and suppliers. We are very grateful for the cooperation and partnership from our local community and regulatory bodies as we seek to provide energy security to the State of California."
The announcement came almost exactly ten years after the 2015 Refugio Oil Spill from ruptured Line 901, now known as Line 324 and shown as the blue line along the Gaviota Coast in the image below, which impacted 150 miles of California coastline and destroyed thousands of acres of shoreline habitats.
According to a letter from California Congressional members earlier this month, Sable Offshore is already facing class action lawsuits alleging that it had mislead investors in its May announcement about restarting production, is facing various lawsuits alleging violations of the California Coastal Act, and on Sep. 16, the Santa Barbara County District Attorney's Office filed criminal charges against the company over alleged violations of state environmental laws.
An arraignment on the criminal complaint in Santa Barbara County Superior Court is currently scheduled for Nov. 4 of this year.
"Sable has consistently ignored California law, as confirmed by the court’s decision today [May 28, 2025] to halt work on this aging oil pipeline in Santa Barbara," said a spokesperson on behalf of the California Coastal Commission which is a litigant against Sable Offshore for its onshore pipeline repair activities. "This fly-by-night oil company has repeatedly abused the public’s trust, racking up millions of dollars in fines and causing environmental damage along the treasured Gaviota Coast."
On Sep. 19, just three days after criminal charges were filed against the company, the Chairman and CEO of Sable Offshore filed a request for expedited permitting and installation of a Floating Production Storage and Offloading vessel with members of the National Energy Dominance Council.
The proposed offshore transportation and treating vessel location would be approximately one nautical mile away from Platform Harmony and could bypass much of the authority California regulators.
Notably, Sable Offshore states that the lease costs for the second option to ship crude oil from an offshore tender location would likely be covered by the savings from not restarting the Las Flores Canyon Facility and associated onshore pipelines.
Both options are compared in the investor slide below.
Sable Offshore noted that it has identified multiple vessels that match the technical specifications to service the Santa Ynez Unit's crude oil that were shared with the federal government in the Sep. 19 letter to the National Energy Dominance Council and are shared below.
Your News Channel reached out to Sable Offshore, the Office of State Fire Marshal, the U.S. Department of Energy, and the U.S. Department of Interior with multiple inquiries about the status of Sable's dual requests as well as about the potential offshore transportation option and its impact.
Their collective responses will be added to this article when they are received.
Sable Offshore shared with investors that the Santa Ynez Unit has a large potential for petroleum extraction as well as additional development in federal waters detailed in the investor slide below.
