Sable begins oil sales from California’s Santa Ynez pipeline after restart

March 30 (Reuters) - Sable Offshore SOC.N said on Monday it has begun selling oil from its Santa Ynez Pipeline System offshore California to Chevron CVX.N, after resuming crude transportation earlier this month.

Shares were up more than 3% in premarket trading.

The pipeline system, which runs along California's Gaviota Coast, had been shut since a 2015 oil spill that polluted miles of coastline, killed wildlife and damaged local fisheries.

Sable's effort to restart the system has since become the subject of a long-running dispute with California regulators and environmental groups, which have filed lawsuits challenging the reopening.

The restart follows a directive from the Trump administration under the Defense Production Act, which ordered the restoration of drilling operations off Southern California to bolster domestic energy supply.

Sable said the pipeline had been filled from Las Flores Canyon to Pentland Station at a rate of more than 50,000 barrels of oil a day.

The Houston-based company said it planned to resume production later on Monday at Platform Heritage, part of the Santa Ynez Unit, with expected output of more than 30,000 gross barrels of oil a day.

The company also expects Platform Hondo, another offshore platform in the unit, to come online by the end of the second quarter.