The hearing board of the Santa Barbara County Air Pollution Control District unanimously voted to grant a 90-day variance to Sable Offshore Corp. — temporarily exempting the Houston-based oil company from meeting certain air pollution regulations on its platform near the Santa Barbara Coast.
Friday morning was a rehearing of a variance petition by Sable after a member of the public submitted an appeal to the hearing board’s decision to approve a variance during its original hearing of the petition on June 25.
This May, Sable exceeded the volume of unplanned flaring, meaning it burned more excess gas than permitted by district rules.
But representatives from Sable argued that it was out of its control.
“The restart of well production on Platform Heritage began on March 31, 2026,” said Trent Fontenot, senior vice president of operations at Sable. “Despite those recommissioning efforts, Heritage experienced conditions during the restart that was beyond Sable’s reasonable control that resulted in excess of that flare.”
The decision was a minor victory for Sable, allowing the oil company to continue pumping oil at its Santa Ynez Unit despite exceeding environmental regulations. The oil company has come under intense opposition from local environmental groups since it began operations off the Santa Barbara Coast four months ago, which includes the pipeline that caused the massive 2015 Refugio Oil Spill. Since restarting, Sable has been involved in a slew of legal battles at the county and state level, with involvement from groups including the Sierra Club and the Environmental Defense Center.
Fontenot presented six findings to the hearing board explaining why Sable was petitioning for another variance. They include that compliance with the relevant regulations would cause Sable to shut down operations at Platform Heritage, which representatives argue would create more air pollution and result in a lost of $1.75 million in revenues each day.
The findings in the air pollution district’s draft variance largely repeated the same findings made in Sable’s petition.
Brooke Balthaser, a community organizer with the Ventura-based organization Climate First: Replacing Oil and Gas, wondered why the hearing board would care about Sable’s loss of revenue.
“The public is not concerned with Sable’s profit margins,” Balthaser said. “We’re concerned if the air we’re breathing is safe or not.”
Goleta resident Bill Woodbridge was furious at another variance petition from Sable, which has continued to operate without a permit from the county.
“They are living on variances. Eleven,” Woodbridge said during public comment. “This is a lawless, criminal organization that thumbs its nose at any regulations, any orders, doesn’t pay its fines and acts like a weasel looking for any hole to pop up out of when something occurs that they don’t like.”
Representatives from various environmental organizations decried what they described as a “rubber stamp” of Sable’s petition.
“On June 25, none of these criteria received independent scrutiny,” said Maureen Ellenberger, president of Sierra Club’s Santa Barbara-Ventura chapter. “The findings simply repeat Sable’s claims, word for word. The board should not be a rubber stamp.”
Hearing board members ultimately sided with Sable, agreeing that the company did everything it could to comply with air pollution regulations.
“What the permittee [Sable] did is exactly what was expected of it,” said hearing board member Robert Saperstein. “We’ve heard from every operator of these facilities…that it is a monstrous ordeal to shut down a facility like that. So we’re left with no choice.”
The name of the decision-making entity was misidentified in an earlier part of the story. It is the “hearing board.”
