SANTA BARBARA COUNTY, Calif. (KEYT) – On Monday, Sable Offshore announced that it started selling oil from the Santa Ynez Unit to at least one private recipient over the weekend.
According to Sable, onshore pipelines were filled from the Las Flores Canyon processing facility to Pentland Station in Kern County at a rate of over 50,000 barrels of oil per day.
Since onshore pipeline Line 901, now known as Line 324, ruptured in 2015, the damaged pipelines and broader oil production infrastructure has been shut down and oversight of its restart was assigned to the Office of State Fire Marshal through a federal court order.
Despite that federal consent decree requiring the state safety agency to manage restart plans, earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a slip opinion that argued the President, or a designated person, can order Sable Offshore, the company seeking to restart oil production since purchasing local oil production infrastructure collectively called the Santa Ynez Unit from ExxonMobil in February of 2024, to begin oil production immediately -skirting federal, state, and local regulatory authority- for national security purposes.
On March 13, 2026, the Trump Administration announced that it had ordered Sable Offshore to restart oil production, including the use of those shuttered onshore pipelines, in Santa Barbara County regardless of any outstanding legal or safety claims…