February 3, 2025 - LOS ANGELES— A federal judge ruled last Thursday that the Center for Biological Diversity and Wishtoyo Foundation can add new legal claims in their case challenging the U.S. Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement’s unlawful extension of several offshore oil and gas leases in the Santa Barbara Channel.
The new claims challenge the bureau’s rubber-stamping of two permits that help facilitate restarting oil and gas production at the Santa Ynez Unit. The agency issued the permits in September 2024 within four days of receiving the applications from Sable Offshore Corp. Its approval relied on an environmental analysis completed 40 years ago.
“It’s appalling that the federal government wants to greenlight risky offshore oil drilling based on information that’s four decades old,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center. “It’s time to phase out offshore oil drilling and fossil fuels, not revive creaky, long-dormant operations. Federal agencies shouldn’t take any action without carefully examining the numerous harms these operations pose to people, wildlife and the ocean environment. We look forward to presenting our arguments to the court.”
Oil and gas drilling at the Santa Ynez Unit has been shut down since June 2015 following a May 2015 oil spill from a corroded onshore pipeline that released about 450,000 gallons onto Santa Barbara’s coast. The spill killed hundreds of birds and marine mammals, including dolphins and sea lions. The pipeline carried oil drilled from three offshore platforms in the Santa Ynez Unit.
The former holder of the leases, ExxonMobil, sold the Santa Ynez Unit and its associated infrastructure to Sable in 2024. Before the spill, oil and gas production had been occurring since April 1981. The federal government last completed an environmental analysis on the harms from this drilling project in 1984.
The 2024 lawsuit says BSEE violated the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and the National Environmental Policy Act when it extended the leases. The new claims also say the agency’s issuance of the permits and failure to conduct an updated environmental review violated the National Environmental Policy Act.
The groups are asking the court to declare the agency’s actions unlawful, reject the lease extensions and drilling permits, and prohibit the agency from issuing any other permits that facilitate restarting the Santa Ynez Unit unless and until it complies with the law.
Off Shore Oil Rigs | Southern California.Camarillo | Santa Barbara | credit: Aerial Photography by Drew Bird Photography
The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.7 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
Source: Center for Biological Diversity