Texas Company had a fine of $ 18 million for oil work on the Californian coast

Santa Barbara, California – In an action applauded by state environmentalists, California Coastal Commission voted to amend an oil company based in Texas 18 million dollars for having omitted to obtain the necessary permits and revisions in its controversial efforts to relaunch oil production off the Gaviota coast.

After hours of public comments Thursday, the Commission noted that Sand offshore Corp. has violated California Coastal Act for months by repairing and improving oil oleagnes near Santa Barbara without approval from the Commission.

In addition to the fine of $ 18 million, the commissioners ordered the company to stop all the countries of development and to restore land where environmental damage has occurred.

“The Coastal Act is the law, the law … set up by a vote of the people,” said Commissioner Meaghan Harmon. “The refusal of sand, in a very real sense, is a subversion of the will of the people of the State of California.”

The decision marks an important escalation in the confrontation between coastal authorities and sand officials, who claim that the commission has exceeded its authority. The action also occurs at a time when the Trump administration is actively encouraging the production of oil and gas in contrast that striking with the clean energy objectives and focused on the climate of California.

Sand insists that he has already obtained the necessary approval of the work of the county of Santa Barbara, and that the approval of the Commission was only necessary when the pipeline infrastructure was proposed for the first time decades.

It was not immediately clear how the company based in Houston would react to the action of the Commission.

“Sand envisages all the options concerning its compliance with these orders,” read a prepared declaration by Steve Rusch, vice-president of environmental and government affairs. “We have respectfully the right to disagree with the decision of the Commission and to request independent clarification.”

In the end, the case may be in court. In February, Sand continued the coastal committee saying that it does not have the power to supervise its work.

Rusch qualified the commission’s requests on Thursday to be part of an “arbitrary license process” and said that the company had worked with coastal committee staff for months to try to respond to their concerns. However, Rusch said that his business was “dedicated to restarting project operations in a safe and effective manner”.

The commissioners voted unanimously to issue the order of transfer and desire – which would cease to work until sand obtains the approval of the Commission – as well as the order to restore damaged land. However, the commission voted from 9 to 2 in favor of the fine – the greatest it has ever received.

The hearing has attracted hundreds of people, including sand workers and supporters and dozens of environmental activists, many of whom carrying t-shirts “do not activate sand”.

“We are at a critical crossroads,” said Maureen Ellenberger, president of the Santa Barbara and Ventura chapter of the Sierra Club. “In the 1970s, the Californians fought to protect our coastal area – 50 years later, we still fight. The Californian coast should not be for sale. ”

Students of the college of Santa Barbara are laid out to speak at a hearing of California Coastal Commission to consider sanctions for the oil company based in Texas trying to restart the drilling on the coast of Santa Barbara.

(Michael Owen Baker / For Times)

At one point, a flow of 20 students from Santa Barbara college testified by consecutive, some barely reaching the microphone. “None of us should be here right now – we should all be in school, but we are here because we are careful,” said Ethan Maday, 14, a ninth year student who helped organize the trip of his classmates at the hearing of the Commission.

Santa Barbara has long been a community concerned with the environment, partly due to a history of major oil spills in the region. The largest spill, which occurred in 1969, released around 3 million oil gallons and inspired by multiple environmental protection laws.

Sand hopes to reactivate the so-called Santa Ynez unit, a collection of three offshore oil platforms in federal waters. The Hondo, Harmony and Heritage platforms are all connected to the Las Flores pipeline system and the associated ease of treatment.

It was this network of oil lines that underwent a massive spill in 2015, when the Santa Ynez unit belonged to another company. This spill occurred when a corroded pipeline broke and released around 140,000 gallons of crude near Refugio State Beach. Current sand work aims to repair and upgrade these lines.

At the hearing on Thursday, sand supporters insisted that upgrades would make the network of pipelines more reliable than ever.

May Lindsey, an entrepreneur who works on the sand leaks detection system, said that she had found “unfair” how the commission asserts himself in their work.

“Are you in your way to apply this?” Lindsey asked.

She said that people must understand that focusing on previous spills is no longer relevant, given the way technology has changed considerably: “We learn and we improve,” she said.

Steve Balkcom, a sand entrepreneur who lives in the County of Orange, said that he was working on pipelines for four decades and that he has no doubt that he will be among the safest. He wrote the controversy to an attitude “not in my backyard”.

“I know that the pipeline can be safe,” said Balkcom.

Sand argued that he could carry out his corrosion repair work under the original pipeline permits of the 1980s. The company maintains that these permits are always relevant because its work only repair and maintain an existing pipeline, without building new infrastructures.

The coastal commission rejected this idea on Thursday. Showing several photos of the current sand pipeline work, Lisa Hauche, head of the commission application, qualified the work as a “vast both on its scale and with affected resources”.

The staff of the Commission also argued that current work is far from identical to the original permits, noting that the recent requirements of the marshal of the state fires oblige new standards to meet the corrosive trends on the pipeline.

“Not only did they worked in sensitive and sufficient environmental protection habitats and during the times, sensitive species were in danger, but they also refused to comply with the orders which are issued to them to solve these problems,” said Hauche during the hearing.

In a defense declaration, however, Sand said that this project “would meet the more strict environmental and security requirements than any other state pipeline”.

The resident of Carpinteria, Jessica Norris, holds a sign in an overflow room during the hearing of California Coastal Commission.

(Michael Owen Baker / For Times)

The company estimates that when the Santa Ynez unit is entirely online, it could produce around 28,000 barrels of oil per day, according to a presentation of investors, while generating $ 5 million per year of new taxes for the county and 300 additional jobs. Sand plans to restart the production of offshore oil in the second quarter this year, but the company recognizes that regulatory and surveillance obstacles remain.

In particular, its restart plan must always be approved by the state fire commissioner, although several other documents are being examined by other state agencies, including state parks and state Water Resources Control Board.

On Thursday, the commissioners were grateful to the community contribution, including sand workers, which Harmon called “people who work hard” not responsible or for violations of the Coastal Act.

“Coastal development permits make it safe,” said Harmon. “They do work more safe not only for our environment … they make work safer for people who do the work.”

She urged Sand to work in cooperation with the Commission.

“We can have good well -paid jobs and we can protect and preserve our coast,” said Harmon.

But some environmentalists have said that Thursday’s conclusions should also question the larger sand project.

“How can we trust this company to operate in a responsible manner, in complete safety or in accordance with regulations or laws?” Alex Katz, executive director of the environmental defense center based in Santa Barbara, said in a statement. “California cannot afford another disaster on our coast.”