For Santa Barbara, the oil pipeline debate is not new. It comes with hard-earned lessons shaped by decades of oil development in the Santa Barbara Channel, a catastrophic spill in 2015, and repeated efforts by the community to ensure that the risks of offshore oil production are not shifted onto the citizens and our community.
The pipeline system runs from the Las Flores Canyon processing facilities on the Gaviota Coast inland to California facilities for processing 120 miles away in Kern County. It does not cross state lines. It never has. Now the federal government, once happy to offload the project to state jurisdiction, has swept in to claim the pipeline is “interstate” and hand over the operation to the underfunded company, Sable Offshore.
We all remember May 2015, that same pipeline system failed and ruptured near Refugio State Beach, releasing oil that flowed into creeks, reached the ocean, and spread along 150 miles of coastline. Beaches closed. Wildlife was harmed. Tourism and local livelihoods suffered. The spill left a permanent scar on the community’s memory. Tyler Hayden and Nick Welsh of the Santa Barbara Independent have written brilliantly about that history…