Trump could restart California oil pipeline with Cold War-era law, opinion says.

A gas pipeline under construction near Amarillo, Texas, on Nov. 10, 2025. The Trump administration on Jan. 13 moved to limit the ability of states to block the construction of oil pipelines, coal export terminals and other energy projects that could pollute local waterways. (Paul Ratje/The New York Times)

By SOUMYA KARLAMANGLA

President Donald Trump has the authority to restart an oil pipeline project off the Santa Barbara, California, coast by invoking the Defense Production Act, the Justice Department said last week in a legal opinion. A presidential order under the act would overrule the objections of state officials, who say that serious problems remain more than a decade after the pipeline ruptured and caused one of the worst spills in state history.

The legal opinion came three days after the United States and Israel went to war with Iran and oil prices began rising amid fears that Middle East supplies would be constrained.

The 1950s-era law is typically used in national emergencies, but the administration invoked it last month to increase the production of glyphosate-based weedkillers, while former President Joe Biden used it in 2022 to boost access to critical minerals used in large-capacity batteries.

Sable Offshore, which is based in Texas, has been trying to reopen the offshore pipeline, which connects to what is one of the largest known offshore oil fields in the United States.

The pipeline project has been stalled for more than a year as the company has been unable to secure the required permits from California state and local officials, who have also sued the company for violating environmental laws.

State regulators have said that Sable has not yet sufficiently repaired corrosion on the pipeline that created the oil spill, which Sable has denied. The 2015 spill released more than 100,000 gallons of oil onto California’s Central Coast, blackening birds and beaches and creating a 9-mile ocean slick.

The company late last year sought help from the Trump administration to try to bypass California officials to get the project approved. In December, the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration reclassified the pipelines as exclusively under federal oversight and issued the company a waiver to restart operations, saying it could bypass state law.

In response, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and environmental groups sued the Trump administration over what Bonta called an “unlawful power grab” to assert jurisdiction over the pipeline.

Then last week, the Justice Department released its legal opinion finding that Trump could issue an order under the Defense Production Act that would “preempt the California laws currently impeding Sable from resuming production and operating the associated pipeline infrastructure.”

Julie Teel Simmonds, an attorney with the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that sued the administration over the federal reclassification, said the federal government was clearly trying to get around California’s environmental protections.

But she said she wouldn’t be surprised to see such an order from Trump, given how much he likes to battle with California and Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Sable declined to comment on the Justice Department opinion. Neither the White House nor the Department of Energy, which had asked the Justice Department for the opinion, responded to requests for comment.

Linda Krop, chief legal counsel for the Environmental Defense Center, an environmental advocacy group in Santa Barbara, balked at the prospect of the federal government overriding state and federal safety laws to restart “this defective pipeline.” She said her organization was exploring how to challenge such an order.

“Even in these unprecedented times, this abuse of executive power would be staggering,” Krop said in a statement. “The federal administration is threatening to prop up a company that has flouted the law.”