President Trump is asserting executive authority to demand the controversial resumption of offshore oil drilling along California’s coastline as gas prices soar amid the ongoing war with Iran.
On Friday, Trump signed an executive order giving the Department of Energy the ability to use a Cold War-era law known as the Defense Production Act to accelerate oil and gas development. Energy Secretary Chris Wright quickly responded with an order directing Sable Offshore Corp. to restore operations of the Santa Ynez Unit, which includes offshore oil rigs in federal water and a network of pipelines that run along the Santa Barbara County coast and inland.
“Today’s order will strengthen America’s oil supply and restore a pipeline system vital to our national security and defense, ensuring that West Coast military installations have the reliable energy critical to military readiness,” Wright said in a statement.
Gov. Gavin Newsom blasted the action as “an attempt to illegally restart a pipeline whose operators are facing criminal charges and prohibited by multiple court orders from restarting.”
Newsom said Trump started a war knowing it would increase gas prices nationwide, and is now using the conflict as a pretext to “open California’s coast for his oil industry friends so they can poison our beaches.”
He pledged to take legal action against the move.
Representatives for Sable did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.
Friday’s announcements seek to make good on previous threats from the Trump administration to force the resumption of offshore oil drilling in California. They also follow more than a year of effort from Houston-based Sable Offshore Corp. to revive dormant oil infrastructure along the Santa Barbara County coast.
Environmental organizations, residents and state political leaders have strongly opposed such resumption, citing potential dangers to ocean health. Sable has faced particular backlash over its efforts to restart a pipeline that ruptured in 2015, sending 100,000 gallons of crude oil into the ocean and devastating marine life in one of the biggest oil spills in state history.
Once fully online, Sable’s Santa Barbara County facilities could produce around 50,000 barrels of oil a day, replacing nearly 1.5 million barrels of foreign crude each month, according to the Department of Energy.
Still, this represents a drop in the bucket compared with the estimated 20 million barrels a day currently held up by Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz in response to ongoing American and Israeli attacks.
“The reality is that restarting the Sable project would produce nowhere near enough oil to lower the skyrocketing gas prices families are facing,” U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Santa Barbara) said in a statement. “[Trump’s] reckless war is causing immense damage, and jamming the Sable project through is a hollow solution.”
Wright on Friday said resuming offshore drilling was necessary to address “supply disruption risks caused by California policies that have left the region and U.S. military forces dependent on foreign oil.” He slammed “decades of radical state policies” for driving a decline in domestic oil output, and called California’s reliance on overseas oil a national security threat.
He also said that restoring Sable’s operations will create hundreds of jobs and generate millions in local economic activity.
Critics of the resumption say that Americans will see no direct price benefit from a limited increase in domestic oil output, noting that U.S. oil is sold to the highest bidder worldwide and not at a discount for Americans. When crude oil prices spike, American crude oil sells at the same elevated global price.
Two weeks into the Iran war, crude oil has reached $100 a barrel, and the average price of gas in California has topped $5.40 a gallon, according to the American Automobile Assn.
Talia Nimmer, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, decried Trump’s executive action as a “revolting power grab by an extremist president.”
“Trump is misusing this Cold War-era law just to help a Texas oil company skirt vital state laws that protect our coastline, and Californians will pay the price,” Nimmer said in a statement.
The Defense Production Act, evoked by Trump on Friday, gives the president broad power to influence domestic industry in the interest of national defense or emergencies. It was used by former President Biden to help respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and by Trump last year to ramp up domestic mineral production.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Justice released a legal opinion stating that the act could be used to give the federal government authority to plow past the California laws impeding Sable from resuming production. Sable is still awaiting approval from the California Coastal Commission and California State Parks.
The company purchased the shuttered Santa Barbara drilling facilities from Exxon in 2024 and began efforts to resuscitate the drilling infrastructure, which have been met with a series of lawsuits.
Environmental groups have challenged the Office of the State Fire Marshal’s issuance of waivers to pipeline safety requirements for Sable, and also won a preliminary injunction last July after taking legal action following Sable’s May announcement that it had resumed oil production from one of three offshore platforms.
The oil company has been cited by the Coastal Commission for unlawful work in sensitive coastal habitat, sued by the California attorney general and faced criminal charges from the Santa Barbara district attorney for alleged unlawful discharge into waterways.
In January, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta sued the Trump administration, alleging it overstepped its regulatory authority to restart pipelines tied to Sable’s Santa Barbara drilling operations.
Federal regulators are also currently investigating whether Sable improperly shared investor information, according to Bloomberg.
Times staff writer Grace Toohey contributed to this report.
