A pipeline that coated Santa Barbara’s beaches in crude oil eleven years ago is pumping again, and California is going to court to shut it down.
Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit in April 2026 against the U.S. Department of Energy, challenging a federal order that invokes the Defense Production Act to force the restart of an offshore oil pipeline system idled since the 2015 Plains All American spill near Refugio State Beach. That rupture sent roughly 140,000 gallons of crude into the Pacific, blackening miles of coastline, killing marine wildlife, and leading to a criminal conviction of the pipeline’s former operator in 2018.
Now, under an order signed by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, the federal government has directed Sable Offshore Corp. and Pacific Pipeline to prioritize transporting hydrocarbons from the Santa Ynez Unit through the Santa Ynez Pipeline System to Pentland Station. Oil is already flowing. Federal officials moved ahead over the objections of state leaders, and the confrontation has become the sharpest test yet of how far Washington can push wartime energy powers against a state’s environmental protections.
The federal order and what it does
The instrument at the center of this fight is a Pipeline Capacity Prioritization and Allocation Order issued under the Defense Production Act. Filed as Exhibit 99.3 in a Sable Offshore Corp. SEC disclosure, the order names Sable and Pacific Pipeline as the responsible parties, defines the operational scope as the Santa Ynez Unit, associated pipelines, and the Las Flores Canyon processing facility, and imposes monthly reporting requirements to the DOE. The department’s stated justification centers on supply-disruption risks tied to what it describes as global conflict, though the order does not name a specific war or theater of operations, leaving the factual basis for invoking DPA emergency authority unclear…