LOS ANGELES (CN) — ExxonMobil intends to halt its attempt to have a federal judge overturn Santa Barbara County's denial of a permit to truck more than 11,000 barrels of oil a day over narrow Central Coast roads.
The oil company said in a court filing Thursday that it had sold its Santa Ynez unit to Sable Offshore Corp. this week and that it would work out a stipulation to dismiss the lawsuit with the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors and the environmental advocacy groups that were fighting the case.
Exxon had to shut down its three offshore platforms in the Santa Barbara channel in 2015, after a pipeline that carried the processed oil from an onshore facility to refineries inland ruptured and released 142,000 gallons of oil onto the beach and into the ocean.
In 2017, The company sought to modify the permit under which it operates the Santa Ynez facility so that it could truck the crude oil from the processing facility to refineries for as long as seven years or until a new pipeline had been constructed.
Exxon filed a lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles after Santa Barbara County denied its request to modify the permit for the Santa Ynez unit in 2022. The county supervisors had been concerned about the risk of oil spills from truck accidents, as happened as recently as 2020 on Route 166.
In its lawsuit, Exxon argued the supervisors denied the modified permit for reasons that had nothing to do with the merits of its request. Rather than focusing on whether the plan to transport oil by tanker trucks complied with federal, state and local law, Exxon claimed, the county treated it as a referendum on offshore oil production.
“ExxonMobil’s plan to restart its offshore platforms and truck millions of gallons per week through Santa Barbara County was reckless, dangerous and totally unwelcome by this community,” Linda Krop, chief counsel of the Environmental Defense Center, which represents Get Oil Out!, Santa Barbara County Action Network, Surfrider Foundation and Sierra Club in the litigation, said in a statement Friday.
In 2023, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee denied Exxon's request to vacate Santa Barbara County's denial of a temporary trucking permit.
The judge found the county's decision was based on substantive enough evidence to overcome Exxon's challenge. Specifically, the judge rejected the oil company's argument that the county's decision was based on anecdotal evidence of the risks of tanker trucks navigating State Route 166, a narrow two-lane highway connecting California's Central Coast to the Southern San Joaquin Valley.
The May 19, 2015, rupture of the pipeline caused thousands of gallons of crude oil to flow into the Pacific Ocean along the Gaviota Coast north of Santa Barbara. The ruptured pipeline, owned by Texas-based Plains All American Pipeline, spewed oil through a storm drain under Highway 101 and into the ocean for several hours.
The disaster forced the closure of multiple state marine conservation areas and public beaches as well as fishing and shellfish businesses.
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