Texas-based oil & gas firm demands $347M in damages from Golden State over pipeline halt

October 10, 2025, by Melisa Cavcic

As a pipeline shutdown saga continues in California, Sable Offshore, a Texas-headquartered oil and gas company, is looking to get hundreds of millions in damages as part of the escalation of its dispute with the California Coastal Commission.

Harmony platform; Source: Sable Offshore

Sable Offshore, which is focused on developing the Santa Ynez Unit (SYU) in federal waters off the coast of California, has shed more light on its ongoing legal case, ‘Sable Offshore Corp., et al. v. California Coastal Commission, et al.’ The firm has filed a motion to request leave to amend the current lawsuit to quantify monetary damages in its inverse condemnation claim against the California Coastal Commission.

This comes after the Commission issued an executive director cease and desist order in November 2024, forcing Sable to cease its anomaly repair program. Afterward, the firm received confirmation that the anomaly repair program on the Las Flores Pipeline System was authorized by existing permits issued by the County of Santa Barbara under its Local Coastal Program and delegated Coastal Act authority.

As a result, Sable continued and completed its anomaly repair program in the Coastal Zone as required by the Federal Consent Decree. The company now seeks damages of more than $347 million as compensation for what it describes as the unlawful delay of the restart of the Las Flores Pipeline System.

Aside from this, the Texas-based player filed a declaratory judgment action on September 29, 2025, against the State of California in Kern County, asking the court to confirm that certain provisions of SB 237 do not apply to the Las Flores Pipeline System.

The company restarted one of three SYU platforms in May 2025, enabling the first oil output from the Harmony platform since May 2015, when a corroded onshore pipeline ruptured and released around 450,000 gallons (1,703.44 cubic meters) of oil near Refugio State Beach north of Santa Barbara.

The platform’s oil production from six wells to Las Flores Canyon (LFC) at a rate of around 6,000 barrels of oil per day was expected to be followed by a resumption of output from the additional 44 wells on the Heritage platform and the 26 wells on the Hondo platform by the end of 2025.

View on Offshore-energy.

The U.S. firm claims that it continues to work diligently with California to safely and responsibly resume petroleum transportation through the Las Flores Pipeline System under its Federal Consent Decree, which was entered into by several state and federal agencies.

“Continued delays in approving the restart plans for the Las Flores Pipeline System will prompt Sable to pursue the accelerated Offshore Storage and Treating Vessel strategy, which was utilized to process Santa Ynez Unit production in federal waters from 1981 – 1994. Over this time period, the Santa Ynez Unit produced over 160 million barrels of oil equivalent,” warned Sable.

The legal move comes shortly after the firm refuted any wrongdoing in its actions to bring back online two pipelines connecting its assets offshore California to an onshore processing facility in the aftermath of legal action initiated by the Santa Barbara County District Attorney’s Office.