In the game of jurisdictional hot potato over Sable Offshore’s plans to restart the stagnant oil pipelines running along the Gaviota Coast, the California State Fire Marshal has lobbed the potato elsewhere in a November 7 letter to members of the State Legislature acquired this week by the Independent. Who’s up next to catch the potato, however, remains unclear.
In its response to a September letter from 13 state legislators calling for increased transparency and environmental review of Sable’s restart plans, the Fire Marshal’s Office claimed it “does not have the unilateral authority to allow for the restart or decommission of these pipelines.” Rather, their job is to evaluate the safety of the pipelines against established engineering guidelines if they were to restart.
Further, the Fire Marshal did not agree to conduct a new environmental impact report, as the state legislators previously called for. The last environmental impact report was completed in 1985, when pipelines were first constructed. Three decades later, they ruptured in the 2015 Refugio Oil Spill due to unchecked corrosion and criminal negligence in maintaining the pipelines.
Groups opposing the restart over environmental concerns, including the Santa Barbara–based Environmental Defense Center (EDC), argue that the Fire Marshal does, in fact, hold jurisdiction based on a 2020 settlement agreement that came out of the Refugio spill. This Consent Decree outlines the exact requirements for an operator to restart the oil pipelines.
“[The operator] shall not operate [the pipelines] until authorized to do so by the Office of the State Fire Marshal,” the Consent Decree reads.
The Fire Marshal agreed in March to schedule a public meeting on the matter instead of the public hearing that legislators and the EDC demanded. A public hearing would allow for public comments and outside review to be considered in the Fire Marshal’s decisions on Sable’s plans, while a public meeting holds substantially less weight and remains unscheduled. To date, Sable has completed one of the six steps required by the Fire Marshal — an approved risk analysis completed by the pipelines’ previous operator, ExxonMobil, in 2021.
Sable remains bound by the California Coastal Commission’s oversight, whose cease-and-desist order halted work on the coastal portions of Sable’s pipelines until February 2025.
