Chevron launches new project off Santa Barbara coastline amid bitter war with California over oil drilling

A Southern California city announced a new project involving Chevron’s removal of tons of pipelines deep on the ocean floor amid a war with the state’s green agenda over oil drilling.The City of Carpeteria said Santa Barbara residents will soon notice work being done along the coastline by the gas giant to take out “shuttered seafloor pipelines” between the coast and three miles offshore, a message from the city’s Facebook page read.These are the pipelines that previously connected offshore platforms with the now former onshore processing facility, the statement read.There will be “increased vessel and diver activity” off the coast of Tar Pits Beach, an area where natural asphalt seeps onto the beach, it added.“Chevron has mitigation and monitoring measures in place to protect our local marine ecosystems and sensitive species,” it added, after issuing the limited license for the work.The project is expected to last about 15 days, edhat Santa Barbara reported.Chevron officials assured the city council that “exclusion zones will be established only during active work periods,” with the areas where they are working marked with tape, rope and signage, per Citizen Portal. “The only time that we envision excluding people from those areas would be if we were actively working in them,” a Chevron spokesperson said during the city council meeting, per the report.The work comes following an ongoing battle in the state involving Sable Offshore Corp who announced in March it had restarted production in the Santa Barbara’s offshore platforms, sending oil through the region’s controversial pipeline for the first time since 2015.

The pipeline was shuttered that year after a spill resulted in thousands of barrels of crude leaking into the Pacific Ocean.In March, President Donald Trump initiated the Defense Production Act to allow for the restarting of pumping off the Santa Barbara coastline.That same week, California filed a lawsuit challenging the ...