Twenty Members of Congress (17 from California) filed the attached amicus brief in support of California’s challenge to the use of the Defense Production Act (DPA) to facilitate the restart of production at the Santa Ynez Unit (SYU) in the Santa Barbara Channel.
Per their filing:
“This case is not about national defense. It is about a heavily leveraged, crude oil company asking the President to transform the DPA from a statute designed to“assure the availability of domestic energy supplies for national defense needs,” 50 U.S.C. § 4502(a)(5), into a corporate rescue operation for political allies; a rescue that advances the Administration’s political preference for fossil-fuel development at the expense of all other concerns. The Department of Energy’s (“DOE”) March 13, 2026 order (the “Wright Order”) comes nowhere close to identifying a need for Sable crude oil or pipelines in the Order’s generalized invocation of California’s military presence and increased reliance on foreign crude.”
Comments:
- The brief includes no new arguments or information.
- Is it not disingenuous to raise concerns about Sable’s financing when these critics and their allies spent a decade blocking Exxon, one of the world’s strongest companies, from restarting SYU production? Exxon’s frustration led to the ownership transfer to Sable, even though Exxon could still be held liable for some obligations, most notably decommissioning.
- Given the conflict-driven turmoil in the energy markets and the risk of shortages affecting military operations, how is it a stretch to issue a DPA order directing the restart of an important onshore pipeline?
- A Federal judge for the Central District of California has already opined that the DPA is a “significant statutory grant of authority to the executive, giving the President substantial discretionary power to compel private industry, allocate resources, and incentivize domestic production for national defense.”
- With oil prices soaring, this is a bad time to attempt to halt a 20+% increase in California oil production.
I think disingenuous is too harsh for the signers/filers of this brief. Given that they all seem to be affiliated with environmental groups in one way or another, I would just accept that this is what they do and they would not be true to themselves or play to their constituents if they didn’t do it. Mostly though, this is how they fund raise and pay their salaries! I think tendentious is a better word. The brief is tendentious with an insidious intent to present a long-standing ideological position as though it were a neutral assessment of the public interest. BTW, thank God for Chat gpt…I would never have used the words in that last sentence 2 years ago.
Good point and I now know what tendentious means!