California sues Trump energy department over revival of controversial oil pipeline

California attorney general Rob Bonta said he has sued the US energy department to stop it from using a cold-war era law to restart the long-disputed Sable Offshore pipeline system linking the Santa Ynez offshore platform to California refineries.

US energy secretary Chris Wright earlier this month restarted the pipelines using powers granted to him by Donald Trump through an executive order that invoked the Defense Production Act to supersede state laws.

“We won’t let this outrageous federal overreach go without a fight,” Bonta said in a Monday press conference. Bonta alleged Wright’s restart order violates state law, state court orders and a settlement approved by a federal court.

Spokespersons for the US energy department and Sable Offshore did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit, which was filed in San Francisco federal court.

California is asking the court to rule that Wright’s restart order violated federal law and the US constitution, and to prohibit the energy department from relying on the order to operate the Santa Ynez platform and its pipelines.

The Santa Ynez platform was shut down due to a 2015 spill that dumped more than 100,000 gallons of crude oil into the Pacific Ocean and on to beaches near Santa Barbara. The lawsuit is the latest in a series of conflicts between Trump, who wants to supercharge domestic fossil-fuel production, and the California governor Gavin Newsom, a Democrat who has championed his state’s ambitious climate change agenda.

Wright’s order came as fuel prices have surged across the globe due to the US-Israeli war on Iran. Sable said earlier this month it began shipping hydrocarbons from Las Flores Canyon to Pentland Station on 14 March, and that it expects to sell 50,000 barrels per day by 1 April.

“Donald Trump started a war, admitted it would spike gas prices nationwide, and told Americans it was a small price to pay,” said Newsom in a 13 March statement about Wright’s order. “Now he’s using this crisis of his own making to attempt what he’s wanted to do for years: open California’s coast for his oil industry friends so they can poison our beaches.”

In January, California sued over the Trump administration’s decision to reclassify the Sable pipelines as “interstate” even though they run between two California counties.

That lawsuit is still pending before the ninth US circuit court of appeals.