Pelosi Joins Democratic Colleagues in Challenging Trump Administration’s Involvement in the Sable Offshore Pipeline Restart

September 8, 2026 Press Release Washington, D.C. — Today, Speaker Emerita Pelosi joined Representative Salud Carbajal (D-CA-24), along with Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Top Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and U.S. Senators Alex Padilla (D-CA) and Adam Schiff (D-CA), and 13 of their colleagues in filing an amicus brief in California v. Wright, pending in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, to challenge the Trump Administration’s use of the Defense Production Act (DPA) to facilitate the restart of the Sable Offshore oil pipeline system along the California Central Coast. The brief argues that the Administration has failed to identify a legitimate national defense need for Sable’s crude oil and that the DPA order does not satisfy the statutory requirements for invoking this extraordinary authority. Sable produces crude oil—not finished fuels used by the military—and the order does not establish a connection between Sable’s production and an unmet military fuel requirement. “The Trump Administration’s abuse of the Defense Production Act to revive the Sable pipeline is an unlawful corporate giveaway masquerading as a national security measure,” said Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. “California communities know the devastating consequences of offshore oil spills. Congress created the Defense Production Act to protect our national security—not to reward political allies, endanger our coastline and override vital environmental safeguards.” An excerpt from the brief is below. “This case is not about national defense. It is about a heavily leveraged, crude oil company asking the President to transform the Defense Production Act (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. DOE never explains why those general circumstances create a national-defense need for Sable’s crude, much less how restarting its beleaguered pipelines would meet one. “Merely invoking “national defense” or an “emergency” does not insulate executive action from the statutory prerequisites that Congress imposed in the DPA on the exercise of delegated authority. Enforcing these requirements, i.e., that the Secretary establish the statutory predicates for invoking the DPA, does not amount to second-guessing genuine executive judgments about national defense. Instead, enforcement honors the conditions precedent Congress imposed to prevent abuse of the DPA. DOE’s failure to satisfy these statutory prerequisites invalidates the Wright Order.” The full amicus brief is available HERE.