U.S. Senator Schiff and Congressman Carbajal continue their fight against Sable Oil Operations
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (KEYT) - With Sable Offshore Oil now pumping oil from two of its three platforms off Santa Barbara County, the opposition to this newly restarted operation continues.
U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.-24) were flanked by environmentalists and other local political leaders Thursday at Shoreline Park to discuss the current legal challenges and strategies.
With the recent restart of two platforms an estimated 52,000 barrels of oil a day are being moved on shore and through a controversial pipeline. That pipe broke in 2015 along the Refugio coast causing one of the worst oil spills in the county's history. Sable was not the operator at the time.
Work has taken place to repair the pipeline and Sable says it is safe. Sable says a third platform, Hondo, will be operating in June. All of the oil comes ashore in a pipeline that sends the crude to refineries, primarily Chevron in El Segundo.
The restarting of the platforms came with support from the White House due to what was said was an oil crisis in the U.S. from the war in the Middle East.
The group that gathered included California Assemblyman Gregg Hart along with Chief Legal Counsel for the Environmental Defense Center, Linda Krop, the Tribal Leader for the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation, Mati Waiya and also Brandon Jones-Cobb Center for Biological Diversity.
"We've seen the disaster. This greed. This lopsided approach to taking away the health of our ecosystem for the profit of others. It's absurd," said Waiya. He referenced the impacts on marine life including the symbolic dolphins which carries a deep meaning and connection with tribal history and its ancestors.
Hart says at every turn Sable has not cooperated with California's oil policy. "Sable continues pumping oil into its pipelines despite unresolved legal disputes, violations of state regulations and direct court orders that halt restart activities. California law and direct court orders are not optional. We cannot allow Sable and the Trump administration to operate as though they are above the law."
Schiff says no hearings are expected in Washington on this oil production issue under the current leadership, but if it changes, he says. "I want to know what discussions took place around all the contributions the industry was making, and, how they sought to call on the promises the president made to be essentially the president of the oil industry," he said. "That's the line of questioning I will have when we get the opportunity. "
With a dual targeted approach aimed at Trump and Sable Carbajal said, "Trump and his cronies are telling people that Sable is a domestic solution to energy, to the energy crisis and the energy crisis that he created with his idiotic and illegal war with Iran. But the reality is that Sable won't produce anywhere near oil to lower the price families are paying at the pump." Many Santa Barbara drivers are currently paying in excess of $6.00 a gallon for gas now.
Schiff was angry that a wind energy project off the coast of Morro Bay has been stopped after a buy out-style deal by the Trump administration to two companies for $885-million to abandon their plan. "Moving off of fossil fuels and moving to renewable sources of energy is an environmental imperative. It is a health imperative. It's an economic imperative. It is a national security imperative. So many of these conflicts, like this war we're in now with Iran, end up being about, the oil economy," he said.
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