The Interior Department announced the Santa Ynez Unit as a “significant achievement” in the Trump administration's “Energy Dominance initiative.” “With production now underway at Sable's Platform Harmony, the Interior's Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) continues to work with Sable to bring additional production online,” the BSEE said in its July 25, 2025 statement.
Sable Offshore Corp. announced in May that it had restarted oil production from six wells on Platform Harmony in its Santa Ynez Unit. The Santa Ynez Unit had been shut down since a leak in its pipeline system caused the 2015 Refugio oil spill.
Platform Heritage is to be preproduction inspections with a target restart date of October 2025 at approximately 10,000 barrels a day. The BSEE anticipates all three platforms in the Santa Ynez Unit—Harmony, Heritage, and Hondo—will be online by the end of 2025.
The BSEE said the area contains approximately 190 million barrels of recoverable oil reserves, which is nearly 80% of residual Pacific reserves and about 3% of the total production potential for the U.S.
“President Trump made it clear that American energy should come from American resources,” BSEE Principal Deputy Director Kenneth Stevens said. "Thanks to his leadership and Secretary Burgum's commitment, we've turned a decade-long shutdown into a comeback story for Pacific production,” he said. “In just months, BSEE helped bring oil back online safely and efficiently—right in our own backyard. That's what Energy Dominance looks like: results, not delays.”