LOS ANGELES (CN) — The Center for Biological Diversity and the Wishtoyo Chumash Foundation on Thursday sued the U.S. Department of the Interior and its Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement over what the groups said were unlawful renewals of multiple offshore oil and gas leases in the Santa Barbara Channel.
The renewals have allowed ExxonMobil to maintain 16 leases in the Santa Ynez Unit — a production unit consisting of three offshore platforms and an onshore processing facility located along the Gaviota Coast at Las Flores Canyon — for the past nine years, even though the company halted production after a significant oil spill in May 2015.
That spill, which released an estimated 500,000 gallons of oil near Refugio State Beach due to a rupture in a corroded pipeline, resulted in the death of hundreds of birds and marine mammals, including dolphins and sea lions.
The environmental groups claim regulators violated several laws, including the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to conduct necessary environmental reviews and neglecting to determine whether the lease extensions were in the national interest. They also accused the agencies of ignoring the climate crisis, public health, endangered species recovery and other environmental concerns.
The lawsuit, filed federal court in Los Angeles, seeks to void the recent lease extensions for the Santa Ynez Unit and prevent BSEE from issuing any future extensions unless the agency complies with legal requirements.
Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity, criticized the lease renewals in a statement announcing the lawsuit.
"I can’t think of a single good reason to renew a lease for aging oil equipment that threatens our coasts," Monsell said. "Federal officials sure haven’t given us one."
"The federal agencies tasked with safeguarding our public waters are required to look at risks and consider public health and the environment,” Monsell added. But the Department of Interior hadn't done that here, she argued, "letting these rusty platforms and pipelines stay in the water year after year, upping the chance of another disaster."
"It’s time to end offshore drilling in California once and for all," Monsell said.
Without the lease extensions, Exxon would have been required to cease its oil and gas operations, permanently plug its wells and decommission its infrastructure in the Santa Barbara Channel. Conversely, renewing the leases allows continued drilling off California’s coast, increasing the risk of further oil spills and accidents, according to the Center for Biological Diversity.
Mati Waiya, executive director of the Wishtoyo Chumash Foundation, emphasized the impacts of fossil fuel extraction in a statement.
"We need to see the end of fossil fuel extraction and development in the outer continental shelf," Waiya said. "These practices continue to cause irreparable damage to marine ecosystems and fisheries essential to Chumash lifeways."
"Our villages and cultural sites are threatened by increasingly frequent environmental disasters, extreme weather events, and sea level rise,” Waiya said. “Too long have the indigenous peoples of California had their culture and lifeways threatened by the aggressively colonialist fossil fuels industry. It is long past time to abandon offshore oil extraction in California.”
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