'We've All Lost Money'

If you're a connoisseur of Phil Mickelson's X account, you know that the HyFlyers GC captain has taken a sudden, keen interest in California’s energy policy. He has posted relentlessly about tankers, refineries, and U.S. fuel reliance on Russia and China. He has blasted California governor Gavin Newsom’s "dangerous and incompetent" (perhaps treasonous!) refusal to relax restrictions on oil extraction. He has found an ally in Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who ripped Newsom for "blocking oil production off California’s coast." Mickelson has even tried a couple of times to direct the attention of U.S. President Donald Trump to the issue.

A particular object of Mickelson’s fascination is a company called Sable Offshore, which operates an oil pipeline off the coast of Santa Barbara, California (the city where I grew up, incidentally). In 2015, this pipeline ruptured, pumping 142,800 gallons of crude oil into a delicate, diverse marine ecosystem. Today, Sable Offshore wants to reactivate the pipeline, but it needs state and local government approvals to do so.

Mickelson is pro-pipeline — or, more precisely, pro-Sable. "Sable [O]ffshore is a win for EVERYONE," he posted on September 9. He has even adopted a catchy slogan: "Enable Sable."

You see where this is headed, right?

A report by the online outlet Hunterbrook — entertainingly repackaged as an episode of the "Pablo Torre Finds Out" podcast — revealed that Mickelson is an investor in Sable Offshore. If the pipeline comes back, the company stands to make “billions” (Hunterbrook’s characterization). Mickelson probably wouldn’t do poorly, either.

But if the pipeline remains dormant, Sable Offshore and its investors will likely lose a lot of money.

That's just the tip of the iceberg of what Hunterbrook uncovered, so please, read the article yourself. Additional findings include the alleged existence of a group chat consisting of Sable Offshore investors, including Mickelson himself; an apparent (very alleged) instance of Mickelson sharing material, non-public information about Sable Offshore’s business with this group chat; a variety of — again, extremely alleged — attempts by Sable Offshore to persuade the Trump administration to face off with Newsom on the pipeline matter; and a description of President Trump's genitalia that, unfortunately, I cannot unread or un-hear.

Mickelson is not happy about these disclosures. First, he warned other members of the group chat that the Hunterbrook reporter was poking around. (Soon the reporter's phone number appeared in "a Craigslist post offering free dog food" — evidently a prank by a group chat member.) Then, Mickelson added, "What's funny about it is we've all been wrong on just about everything and we've all lost money but whatever." That's an epitaph if I've ever seen one.

On Friday morning, Mickelson took to the Everything App to threaten Hunterbrook with legal action: "I know from experience that being in the public eye makes me a frequent target for sensationalized media coverage. I get that it comes with the territory but there are legal limits on false reports. And while I may have been willing to 'let it go' in the past, I'm no longer going to sit quietly and take it when those lines are crossed. I have retained world-class defamation counsel Tom Clare to advise and represent me on this 'article' by Hunterbrook and anyone who reposts it. More to come... lots [winky-face emoji]"

A few notes:

• I look forward to learning which parts of Hunterbrook's reporting are defamatory, or even substantially inaccurate.
• I also look forward to finding out which law will be used to punish "anyone who [has] repost[ed]" the Hunterbrook article.
• This wouldn't be an attempt to chill discourse around a story that has caused personal embarrassment for Mickelson, would it?
• If the name Tom Clare rings a bell, he (according to a Wikipedia article that has been flagged for being "written like a résumé”) "represented Dominion Voting Systems against Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and Mike Lindell in defamation cases related to the 2020 United States presidential election.” But he still "identifies politically as an American conservative." Just passing along information here.
• The last time I remember Phil Mickelson accusing a journalist of making things up, no lawsuit materialized. Maybe because truth is a strong defense against a defamation claim.

For the record, and at the risk of "getting too political," I'm generally in favor of loosening certain environmental regulations to free up domestic energy production. If we resuscitate a few of the oil rigs currently languishing off the coast of Santa Barbara, we might create some new jobs and start to chip away at California’s cost-of-living crisis. I like that! So Mickelson and I might agree on some things, in principle. But this old, bedraggled pipeline doesn't seem like the right place to start. Nor do I think a professional golfer and admitted gambling addict, entangled in an investment gone sour, should be our guiding light on energy policy.

But here’s the craziest (or saddest) part of this story: Mickelson should be too rich to be anywhere near this mess. In 2022, he signed a reported four-year, $200-million contract with LIV Golf, but enough wasn’t enough. He had to get back in the game, bet big on a boom-or-bust oil outfit. And now here we are.

All of this is pretty compelling to follow — another log on the fire that Phil Mickelson has kept burning for his fans and detractors over the past 35 years. Just don't think too hard about what it suggests about the world we live in.