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LOS ANGELES (CN) — A federal judge ruled Thursday that two nonprofits challenging the U.S. Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s approval of the restart of a controversial offshore drilling platform in Central California lacked standing to bring the lawsuit.
U.S. District Judge Michelle Williams Court dismissed the complaint brought by the Center for Biological Diversity and the Wishtoyo Foundation a day before a scheduled hearing on cross-motions for summary judgment.
“Though neither party has raised or challenged plaintiffs’ standing to sue, the court has an independent obligation to consider standing sua sponte,” Court, a Joe Biden appointee, wrote.
The two groups last year accused the federal agency of violating the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act and the Administrative Procedure Act by not requiring Sable Offshore Corp. to revise the development and production plans, or DPPs, — dating back to the 1980s — for the first of the three aging offshore platforms it wanted to reactivate.
The judge in September rejected the bureau’s bid to dismiss the complaint on the grounds that the two nonprofits failed to provide adequate notice of their intent to sue. However, Court indicated at the time that citizen-suit provisions of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, rather than the more generous provisions of the Administrative Procedure Act, controlled the lawsuit.
This turned out to be an obstacle for the nonprofits’ standing to sue at the current juncture.
In the first place, Court noted, the organizations haven’t shown how they have been injured under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act by not having been given notice or an opportunity to comment ahead of the agency’s decision not to require a revised development and production plan.
“None of plaintiffs’ standing declarations, nor plaintiffs’ pending motion for summary judgment, demonstrate that OCSLA or its implementing regulations afford plaintiffs a procedural right to the process of revising a DPP,” Court said.
The statute only requires that BOEM seeks input from local governments for certain decisions, and its up to those local government to notify other stakeholders and solicit their comments for inclusion in their response to the agency.
Moreover, any redress the nonprofits could obtain under the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act from the judge would be for her to order the federal agency to follow the law. And the only thing the law prescribes is that the bureau “from time to time” reviews previously approved development and production plans.
“There is no dispute that BOEM conducted such a review in its April 2025 decision,” Court wrote. “The court is powerless to compel the secretary to conduct another review, as Congress has afforded discretion about when to do so to the Secretary of Interior.
She gave the two organization one more opportunity to file an amended complaint and to fix their failure to establish standing, but noted that she was “hesitant” that the shortcomings could be cured.
“We are reviewing the court’s order and evaluating our options,” Emily Jeffers, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, said in an email. “This order is a procedural roadblock and doesn’t change our belief that these plans are outdated and provide insufficient protection to our coast and communities from a devastating oil spill.”
The three platforms across from Santa Barbara County had been shut down in 2015 following a catastrophic oil spill when the pipeline that carried the crude oil to refineries in California’s Central Valley ruptured. Houston-based Sable Offshore bought the so-called Santa Ynez Unit in 2024 and this year restarted two of three platforms, with the third expected to come online next month.
In March, after the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran had disrupted global oil shipments, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright ordered Sable to start using patched-up pipeline to transport oil from the offshore platforms under the Defense Production Act.
“This decision is a clear-eyed interpretation of federal law in keeping with the Supreme Court’s instruction in Loper Bright to follow the best interpretation of statutes,” Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Adam Gustafson of the Justice Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division said in a statement Friday. “Our defense of BOEM’s decision supports domestic energy production in furtherance of President Donald J. Trump’s directive to unleash American energy.”
California and the oil company are engaged in separate lawsuits over the resumption of oil transport through the overland pipeline.
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