A new courtroom challenge aims to prevent fossil fuel production from restarting on an aging oil platform that has been dormant for a decade off the coast of California.
The Center for Biological Diversity and the Wishtoyo Chumash Foundation, an Indigenous-led environmental group, are suing the Interior Department for failing to require the new owner of the offshore platform — the Santa Ynez Unit — to complete a new development and production plan before it plans to restart production in the second quarter of this year.
If the court does not intervene, Sable Offshore will be allowed to restart drilling under “woefully outdated” plans that had been approved in the 1970s and 1980s and had not been “meaningfully revised” since, the environmental groups said.
“Sable’s plan to restart production threatens California’s coast with more oil spills, more toxic air pollution, and other harms,” the groups told the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California in a filing Wednesday. “And while all offshore oil and gas drilling is dangerous, the age of the Santa Ynez Unit infrastructure heightens the inherent risks.”
