March 13, 2026 – President Trump signed an executive order invoking the Defense Production Act to accelerate oil and gas development as gas prices rise amid the war with Iran. The Energy Department then ordered Sable Offshore Corp. to restore operations at the Santa Ynez Unit, a set of offshore platforms in federal waters and a pipeline network running along the Santa Barbara County coast.
California officials and environmental advocates said the order attempts to force the restart of infrastructure tied to the site of a major 2015 oil spill and to bypass multiple active constraints. Gov. Gavin Newsom accused the administration of using the war as a pretext to reopen the coast and said the state would pursue legal action, citing court orders, pending criminal charges against the operator, and state permitting requirements that have not been satisfied. A Justice Department legal opinion issued earlier this month argued that the Defense Production Act could be used to override California laws impeding Sable from resuming production.
The structural signal is emergency authority used as a jurisdictional override mechanism. Rather than adjusting federal rules within federal jurisdiction, the administration is asserting that national-defense authorities can “plow past” state regulatory processes and other legal constraints to force production online. The scale of the project—roughly 50,000 barrels per day when fully online—does not meaningfully offset war-driven global supply disruption, reinforcing that the primary significance is the governance posture: external crisis load is being used to justify rapid removal of internal constraints.
The open question is whether this asserted emergency override survives litigation and whether it becomes a repeatable template for using national-security authorities to bypass state environmental, safety, and permitting constraints whenever geopolitical shocks raise domestic energy prices.
This report does not assess the merits of offshore drilling policy, the environmental risks of any specific project, or the legality of the Defense Production Act interpretation beyond noting that it is contested and headed for court review. It observes only that the administration has invoked emergency authority to compel a restart of offshore operations while asserting the ability to bypass state-level constraints and existing legal restrictions.
This report is part of the NS News archive.