California Loses Bid to Block Sable Oil Pipeline Under Park (1)

Sable Offshore Corp. survived California’s bid to block the company from moving oil through an underground pipeline after a federal judge ruled Thursday the operation doesn’t imminently harm the environment.

The state’s safety concerns around the infrastructure in a section of the pipeline that runs beneath Gaviota State Park weren’t enough to warrant a preliminary injunction, the US District Court for the Central District of California ruled.

Judge Stephen V. Wilson, a Reagan appointee, didn’t rule on whether the Defense Production Act order to restart the Las Flores pipeline system over California’s regulatory blocks was lawful. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright had ordered the company to push through production earlier this year, leading the California Department of Parks and Recreation to sue the company in March as part of the state’s broader campaign to stop the Trump administration from usurping local control of a pipeline system that ruptured in 2015 and led to one of the worst oil spills in California’s history.

The state agency identified a “depression or sinkhole” forming around the pipeline in the park during briefing of the case, but during the injunction hearing this month California said this was more “symbolic of risk rather than a risk in itself,” according to the order.

Wilson said the state “is grasping at straws,” for evidence of real environmental harm, and the federal consent decree governing the terms of the system’s restart is controlled by the California Office of the State Fire Marshall, not the parks department.

The Trump administration has argued Sable’s offshore drilling operation is a “critical energy source” for the western US as a portion of international oil supply remains pinched off in the Strait of Hormuz.

State Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) has brought other challenges in federal district courts and the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit against the company and federal restart efforts.

Sable is represented by Latham & Watkins LLP, Babst Calland, and Holland & Knight LLP.

The case is Cal. Dep’t of Parks and Recreation v. Sable Offshore Corp., C.D. Cal., No. 2:26-cv-02946, preliminary injunction 5/28/26.