On the sunny Tuesday morning of May 19, 2015, a decrepit oil pipeline ruptured above Refugio State Beach, spewing thousands of barrels of toxic crude into one of the most fragile eco-systems in the world,
Now, after nearly a decade of litigation, legislative reform and political conflict. a little-known Houston oil company is strenuously pushing to re-open the disputed pipeline, importuning government agencies from Washington to Santa Barbara County, while brushing aside community opposition and concern about another spill.
On this week's edition of Newsmakers TV, prominent environmental attorney Linda Krop joins Nick Welsh and the genial host for a conversation that connects the dots on this urgent, hugely consequential, and maddeningly complex story.
"This would be huge step backward," for environmental protection and climate-friendly energy policy, said Krop, Chief Counsel of the Environmental Defense Center,
"And who is left holding the bag? The public," she told Newsmakers.
Krop, who joined EDC in 1989, has been in the midst of virtually every major environmental battle of the past quarter-century on the Central Coast. In our interview, recorded Thursday, she provided an in-depth and detailed tour de force about offshore oil, a defining issue of public policy debate in Santa Barbara County since the historic 1969 spill.
Weaving context and background, from the nation's first offshore oil extraction the 1890s off the coast of Summerland, to Donald Trump's recent appointment of key, fossil fuel-friendly cabinet members, Krop situates the high stakes of her organization's current battle against a bid by Houston-based Sable Oil Co, to ram through approvals to re-open notorious Pipeline 901, which has been dormant for safety reasons in the more than nine years since the Refugio spill,
The global energy giant Exxon, which owned the leasing rights to pump oil from three offshore rigs in the Santa Barbara Channel, gave up trying to get the pipeline re-permitted after seven years of failed efforts. The company transferred assets to Sable, a company apparently formed for the one and only purpose of trying to restart oil transfers through Pipeline 901 from onshore tanks at the Santa Ynez Unit in Las Flores Canyon.
The "Corporate Overview" on Sable Offshore's web site says it is an "independent upstream company focused on responsibly developing the prolific Santa Ynez Unit in federal waters offshore California."
Having reached a confidential agreement with lawyers for Santa Barbara County, the company appears close to cutting the Gordian Knot of complex government regulations affecting their proposal, which involves a web of overlapping local, state and federal jurisdictions.
For Krop and EDC, the most pressing issue in the controversy is to raise hard, unanswered questions about the finances, competence and liability limits of Sable, matters that are scheduled to come before the Board of Supervisors in February, in the form of an appeal of a recent county Planning Commission decision to green light the pipeline reopening project.
Next month, community members will have the chance to learn more about the full scope of what the project portends at a state informational hearing that is being arranged through the office of Assembly member Gregg Hart, Krop said.
JR
Check out Linda's analysis and assessment of the Pipeline 901 project in our conversation with her via YouTube below, or by clicking through this link. The podcast is here. TVSB airs Newsmakers TV on public access Channel 17 every weeknight at 8 p.m., and at 9 a.m. on weekends. KCSB, 91.9 FM, , broadcasts the program at 5:30 p.m. on Monday.
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