SANTA BARBARA, Calif.— A Texas-based oil company announced to investors today that the California Office of the State Fire Marshal has waived federally required anti-corrosion measures for the Las Flores pipeline system. The system has been shut down since May 2015, when a corroded pipeline ruptured and released about 450,000 gallons of oil near Refugio State Beach.

The state waiver is a major step toward Sable Offshore Corp. restarting oil production from the Santa Ynez Unit’s three offshore oil platforms and transporting that oil through pipelines traversing state waters and three California counties.

“Restarting these decades-old defective pipelines is a recipe for disaster,” said Julie Teel Simmonds, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Shame on California’s fire marshal for waiving important federal safety rules and doing it all behind closed doors without any environmental review. There are tremendous environmental and safety risks to restarting these zombie pipelines and people have a right to be informed about every single step of this process.”

Federal safety standards require pipelines to be equipped with anti-corrosion measures called cathodic protections. Inherent design flaws in the Las Flores pipeline system prevent these critical protections from functioning as they should, heightening the risk of a spill. Ineffective cathodic protection was the direct cause of the 2015 oil spill.

The Refugio spill devastated 150 miles of the California coast, polluting thousands of acres of shoreline and habitat, killing hundreds of marine mammals and birds and shutting down fisheries. Restoration and compensation cost hundreds of millions of dollars and the spill resulted in a felony conviction for the pipeline’s former owner.

Under federal law, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration now has 60 days to object to the waiver.

In late September the California Coastal Commission cited Sable for violating the law by conducting unpermitted construction work to restart the pipeline. The commission issued a second notice a few days later when construction had not stopped, and issued a cease and desist order in November.