Front Page  »  

Oil production restarted offshore of Santa Barbara County 10 years after spill

May 21, 2025

Sable Offshore Corp. photo

By JOSH FRIEDMAN

Approximately 10 years after a major spill off the Gaviota Coast, oil production has resumed offshore of Santa Barbara County. [KFI AM 640]

In 2015, a pipe owned by Plains All American Pipeline ruptured near Refugio State Beach in Santa Barbara County, causing more than 100,000 gallons of oil to spill. About 21,000 gallons of oil flowed into a culvert and then into a ditch that drains into the ocean.

The spill spread over 9 miles of coastline, mostly consisting of sandy beaches.

Last week, Sable Offshore Corp., a Texas-based company, resumed oil production in federal waters offshore of Santa Barbara County. Sable announced it started extracting oil from one of three platforms that had been closed since the 2015 spill.

The resumption of offshore oil production comes just a month after the California Coastal Commission fined Sable $18 million and ordered a halt to their work for not obtaining necessary permits. The company disputes the Coastal Commission’s finding, arguing it has all the required permits for its operations.

Sable is extracting oil at a rate of about 6,000 barrels per day from Platform Harmony. It plans to restart additional wells at Platforms Heritage and Hondo by July and August. 

The company expects to fill the Las Flores Canyon processing facility’s storage capacity by mid-June and begin oil sales in July. Sable remains committed to its operations, despite legal challenges and opposition.

Environmental groups, including the Center for Biological Diversity, have criticized the offshore oil production restart, citing risks to sensitive habits and species. Local residents have expressed opposition to the timing of the restart coinciding with 10th anniversary of the Refugio oil spill.

 


Loading...
Subjects:         
Related:


19 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Most people don’t seem to realize that oil well drilling in California requires massive amounts of extremely toxic chemicals to be injected into the Earth as part of the oil extraction process. What can happen is that these toxic chemicals end up mixing with the water table as has happened and is happening with the water that serves Guadalupe and portions of Santa Maria, as a result of Union oil extraction in Santa Barbara County, and the Guadalupe dunes. This phenomenon is happening elsewhere also is and typically not discovered or reported. In most cases oil extraction is extremely dirty and toxic activity.


-7

Nothing good will come from this. Not if, but the inevitable when. More oil pollution from an out-of-town corporation that really doesn’t care about the surfers, wildlife, fisheries, and our way of life. And those dam platforms are an eyesore. Who cares about party lines. It’s a foul ball.


-11

California imports 40% of its electricity at peak demand. Sometimes it comes from Wyoming coal plants. California has an abundance of natural gas that we should be using and transitioning to nuclear power.


11

As soon as one drop of crude splashes into the ocean, the Coastal Commission will be foaming at the mouth and ordering a shutdown, while simultaneously promoting more lithium storage facilities elsewhere.


9

As luck would have it, I was working in Santa Barbara during this time, so I drove by the site almost every day.

Now bear in mind, 21,000 gallons is about what you have in a typical residential swimming pool- volume wise.

There was some initial damage to birds and the wildlife in the immediate area, and then the ocean did its thing and the stuff was gone. Emulsified in the surf.

The response was ridiculously outsized for the problem and went on for months. Armies of crews and equipment.

Anybody with a practical, working sense of the world couldn’t help but be amused. National media reported that “miles of the coastline where devastated “

For me , it was a real lesson in how things can get conflated and not to just believe everything you hear from “Trusted news sources “


27

Unscientific. Hogwash. We couldn’t paddle out in the SB area due to the pollution. In your case you made observations by driving by. Ya can’t see squat by driving by. Throwing out a little volume fact doesn’t validate your argument either unless you believe in magic…that the ocean magically made the pollution disappear. Next time, get out your car and bring your kids down to the polluted beach for a picnic. Bet you won’t. Heck you won’t even walk your pooch down there. Bottom line: the oil industry doesn’t give two ducks about the American people, our environment and natural resources.


-4

Sorry Wildrnes, but I’ll stick with my “factoid”.

The ratio -even in that small area was insignificant to the mighty Pacific. We had stormy conditions shortly after and it was mostly gone.

What wasn’t gone was the opportunity for virtue signaling environmental groups and government to make a big show of it.

The oil company did indeed blow it and as I recall were fined over 100 million for their blunder.

You also assumed I didn’t get down there…

It’s not that you couldn’t surf (I do too) , it’s that they wouldn’t let you.


2

Good. Now they just need to get the Gaviota refinery back on line, to take the stress off the platforms.


41

This is great news! Drill here, drill now!! It’s much better than pilfering other countries for their oil and sending our money overseas. Coastal Commission should be dismantled and fined for all of the work they hold up and blatant over spending of our tax dollars.


41

Putting this into perspective. 6000 barrels a day at the current rate of $65 a barrel = $390K per day in gross revenue. A single Costco averages $1 million dollars a day.

So, is this enterprise worth the risk it brings? Perhaps. I know it being there or not being there won’t affect what I pay at the pump.


-26

So we should not strive for energy independence because- Cosco? I’m not seeing the correlation.


8

Your Costco couldn’t exist without petroleum, nor could customer’s get to it, nor transporters stock it with the maybe 5% of current inventory that would exist without petroleum products. I’d have thought that fuel prices resulting from California’s so-far successful war on oil extraction and refining would have wised you up, but many insist on clinging to bad ideology over obvious facts. One wonders why environments in oil friendly states haven’t been utterly devastated by oil production as predicted by CA activists. Yet they prosper and thrive while California stagnates.


11

If you want to see environmental damage go to a poor nation or state… California is broke… and any economist will tell you the more oil on the market the lower the cost at the pump… drill baby drill…. Gas prices around the country are going down at a time of year when they traditionally go way up…. Too bad its still going up here… if California would back off of this war on fossil fuels we too could see lower costs at the pump…


16

Would it not be wiser to back off oil production just a bit and transition to zero emission fuels such as biodiesel, hydrogen (though probably too expensive in the long run) and battery electric? In the bay area, the transition has resulted in a decline in emissions by about 2% a year. Just think how much lower that would be if we began to phase out gas guzzling ICE vehicles over the next 25-40 years.


By the way, the U.S. is the largest producer of oil in the world and not sure a few more oil wells off the coast will increase that.


-7

No that would be suicide


1

Its not working…. Adam…


0

Gas prices go sown when the economy contracts or a glut on the market.

It cannot drop below $50 a barrel and be extracted profitably.

You won’t go down is the point.

Your gas prices are more directly tied to refining capacity not production. That is by design.


7

Every barrel of oil will yield hundreds of dollars worth of a multitude of fuels, lubrication, and innumerable plastic packaging variations and products….


…that Costco sells.


2

True, but this project, in this sensitive environmental corridor, will not make any of those products cheaper at Costco. It is just a drop in the (ahem) barrel.


1