A federal judge in California is allowing oil to keep flowing through Sable Offshore’s contentious onshore pipeline, dealing a blow to California regulators and environmental groups who have sought to reverse the Trump administration’s resurrection of the conduit.
On Wednesday, Judge Stephen Wilson for the U.S. District for the Central District of California agreed to modify a consent decree governing how the onshore pipeline could resume operations after it spilled more than 120,000 gallons of crude oil on Refugio State Beach, causing significant ecological damage in 2015.
Under the new terms, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), a federal agency part of the Department of Transportation, will take over management of the consent decree from California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s Office of the State Fire Marshal (OSFM). The order effectively ends the state agency’s veto power over the operation of the pipeline.
“In the view of this Court, though the solution that a federal agency functionally enforces standards set by a state legislature is unusual, it is necessary tailoring to consider both major public interest factors here—protecting energy security and the ecology of California’s coast—while honoring the original expectations of the parties about what substantive rules would apply to the owner of the pipeline,” Wilson wrote in his ruling.
