A California judge on Tuesday sided with the state government and tentatively ruled against Houston-based oil company Sable Offshore’s request to restart a pipeline that pulls crude from the Santa Ynez offshore oil project.
The tentative ruling from Judge Thomas Anderle in the Superior Court for Santa Barbara County marks a major setback for Sable, whose business is entirely focused on the Santa Ynez project. Its shares fell over 20% to about $14 each in extended trading.
The company in May restarted production from one of the three offshore platforms in that project, nearly a decade after it was shut due to an oil spill under previous owner Exxon Mobil.
Sable also repaired the Las Flores subsea pipeline that pulls crude from the offshore platform, in the hopes of selling the oil to refiners in the state, but the California Coastal Commission blocked its restart citing issues with Sable’s permits.
Sable petitioned the Santa Barbara Superior Court and argued the Coastal Commission did not have the authority to issue the cease and desist order. However, the company failed to meet its burden to prove the commission had abused its discretion, Anderle wrote in his tentative ruling.
Anderle will hold a hearing on Wednesday before finalizing the decision.
Meanwhile, Sable is expected to change strategies for marketing the crude oil from the Santa Ynez platform. The company last week said delays in the restart of the Las Flores pipeline system will make it fully pivot to using tankers to shuttle crude from Santa Ynez instead of the pipeline.
Sable has sought support from the federal government for the tanker pathway and last week submitted an updated development and production plan for Santa Ynez detailing that route to the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the company said in its filing.
(Reporting by Shariq Khan in New York; Editing by Chris Reese)