The report claims that Phil Mickelson received inside information about the offshore company

A new report from financial publication Hunterbrook alleges that Phil Mickelson obtained inside information about an offshore oil company and distributed that information to a private group of company shareholders. Mickelson then took to it X Friday afternoon being protected.

on friday, Hunterbrook published a story that included a series of private messages Mickelson shared with a group of investors for Houston-based oil startup Sable Offshore. In the messages, Mickelson appears to share material non-public information gleaned from interactions with Sable Offshore CEO Jim Flores — a decision that could have legal ramifications for Mickelson, the company’s chief executive, or both.

The triple story centers on the latest actions of embattled oil company Sable Offshore, which paid $988 million to take control of a troubled Exxon oil field off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif., and quickly attracted investors looking for a potential moonshot.

From the start, the Sable business was based on a calculated gamble: If Flores could restart production from the Santa Ynez offshore oil infrastructure — a collection of three offshore platforms, a processing facility and a pipeline system that shut down after an environmental disaster in 2015 — the nearly billion-dollar investment would look like a steal.

But the 20 months since the company’s inception have been far more difficult than investors had hoped. Sable Offshore’s efforts to hedge against future environmental disasters have hit a series of regulatory hurdles over the past year and a half. To date, the company has failed to restart production at its oil infrastructure, sending Sable Offshore’s share price down more than 53 percent over the past 12 months.

Mickelson’s involvement in the company has been widely publicized. The LIV Golf star has tweeted more than 100 times about Sable Offshore over 20 months, many of them aimed at California lawmakers and regulators involved in keeping oil production shut down.

Mickelson’s own past with insider trading is well-documented. In 2016, he paid more than 1 million dollars Securities and Exchange Commission to settle allegations that he traded on inside information gathered by legendary gambler Billy Walters.

of Hunterbrook story claims Mickelson was more than just a disgruntled investor, revealing the contents of an X group (formerly Twitter) that appears to show the six-time major champion sharing information obtained from Flores before it became public.

“I spoke with Jim this morning. An announcement is coming today after the market closes. It could be an 8K or press release,” Mickelson reportedly wrote to a group of Sable investors at X on Sept. 29, hours before an announcement from the company that it had filed paperwork with the state of California seeking permission to resume oil production. This was one of a number of examples of material non-public information disclosed in the Hunterbrookhis reporting.

of Hunterbook The story also appeared to show Mickelson involved in a coordinated effort to garner federal support for the Sable Offshore project, a “pray” that could reverse the oil production freeze and restore some of Sable’s plunging stock price. A leaked phone call quoted in Hunterbrook The story appears to show Sable Offshore CEO Jim Flores discussing a “west coast game” between “a left-handed golfer” and current US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. (Lutnick denied he had plans to play with Mickelson and said he had never heard of Sable Offshore.)

The legal implications of Mickelson’s involvement in the story remain uncertain. US insider trading law provides that the transfer of material non-public information is not per se illegal, as long as the information is not traded. On Friday afternoon, Mickelson responded to several tweets about the story with a similar defense, arguing that he did not trade on the information he received and that his actions in the story did not “suggest wrongdoing.”

If Mickelson’s X counterparts traded on material non-public information collected by him, Mickelson could still be found legally liable under US insider trading laws surrounding “tips” — though authorities would have to prove he profited in some way from those trades.

“So a company says I can’t tell you anything, but we’ll announce something eventually,” Mickelson said, in an X response. “I don’t know if it’s a dilution and the stock goes down or a deal for the stock to go up. I have to wait to see what the information is, I don’t make any trades and I’m extremely cautious given past history. I don’t even share that information is coming until after the close.”

Mickelson also included an aimed charge of his own Hunterbrooka financial journalism outfit whose unusual business orientation allows him to trade on information gathered by his reporters, as long as it is not material non-public information. Hunterbrook disclosed on social media that it had not made any trades based on the findings of the Sable Offshore story.

“This looks like stock manipulation on your part and defamation,” Mickelson wrote. “Have you done any trading today?”

The story, which also suggested Sable Offshore would soon need to raise $200 million in equity, sent share prices tumbling on Friday afternoon. At closing time, Sable Offshore was being sold for $10.46 per share, down 18.47 percent from the start of the day.