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U.S. Senator for Oklahoma; Former Executive Chairman and CEO, Williams Companies
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:00:04):
The moderate Dems, I’m telling you, there’s very little of that group that says, “Hey, we shouldn’t…” Like, if you sit down and say, “This is the process we started off with, which was kind of the principles of permitting.” And we said, “If we can come up with a bill that can accomplish these things, are you on board with this?” Because it’s not motherhood and apple pie, but it’s close.
Jason Bordoff (00:00:31):
As the demand for power surges across the United States, the debate over how we build energy infrastructure has reached a fever pitch. And while both sides of the aisle broadly agree that our current permitting process is broken, turning that consensus into actual legislation remains a challenge.
(00:00:48):
Joining us today is someone who brings a unique perspective to that energy debate. After nearly 40 years at Williams — 15 as CEO — Alan Armstrong was recently appointed to the US Senate representing Oklahoma. Now sitting in a policy role, he’s advocating for measures to streamline energy build-outs, part of a broader wave of permitting reform efforts drawing bipartisan attention. So how do we define permitting reform? What does meaningful progress actually look like? Where do we stand today? Can lawmakers find common ground around the projects they want to see built? What role should the federal government play and what role belongs to the states? And how does a former energy CEO navigate the sudden shift from corporate leadership to the Senate floor?
(00:01:37):
This is Columbia Energy Exchange, a weekly podcast from the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. I’m Jason Bordoff. Today on the show, Senator Alan Armstrong. Senator Armstrong is the junior US Senator from Oklahoma, a Republican who was appointed after Markwayne Mullen resigned to become Secretary of Homeland Security. Senator Armstrong has never held elected office before his appointment, having spent his entire career at Williams Companies, one of the largest natural gas infrastructure companies in North America. He’s also the former chair of the National Petroleum Council and a founding member of Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future.
(00:02:22):
In our conversation, Senator Armstrong reflects on his time at Williams and explains how the legislation he has introduced draws on that firsthand experience to reshape federal permitting policy. We dive into the role of judicial review, the power dynamic between federal and state regulators, and how growing energy affordability concerns are adding new pressure to pass meaningful permitting reform.
(00:02:46):
I hope you enjoy our conversation. Senator Alan Armstrong, wonderful to see you again. Thank you for making time to be on Columbia Energy Exchange.
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:02:53):
Glad to be here. Thanks, Jason.
Jason Bordoff (00:02:55):
Thank you for hosting me in the Capitol in this great studio. It’s quite an upgrade from how we normally do these.
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:03:01):
It is a very nice studio.
Jason Bordoff (00:03:03):
And nice to do these in person. They happen a lot more by Zoom now, so thanks. We’re here in your new offices in the Hart Senate office building. So how are you settling in? What’s it like to be a senator versus a CEO?
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:03:13):
Yeah. Well, it’s very different. I’ve been here since March 22nd, I think. So been here a while now. It’s very different. But the good news is it’s a kind of new challenge, new set of skill sets. I’d been CEO for almost 15 years, and so that starts to be a lot of the same old, same old.
Jason Bordoff (00:03:41):
Had you ever thought about public office before?
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:03:43):
No. Never any interest. And I always though about how bad I would be at it and how different the skill sets that I’ve seen for elected officials be different than my own. So I’m certain that the only way I was ever going to be one was to be kind of strong-armed into it. But it’s been a great opportunity. Very thankful actually for Governor Stitt’s selection. My litmus test on this is like, well, would I rather not if I just said no? And the answer is no. I’m glad. I’m honored to have the opportunity. And it is very challenging. Different set of skill sets, but I’m also learning a lot of different things. So it’s actually a pretty cool thing to step from being CEO and then exec chair for Williams because I’m not sure that transition would’ve been all that smooth for me.
(00:04:44):
So this has been really nice to have something else to kind of engage my brain on. So overall, I’m very pleased.
Jason Bordoff (00:04:51):
You’ve been connected to government and public policy. Obviously any CEO in the energy sector in particular needs to be, but even beyond what would be necessary with chairing the National Petroleum Council and things like that. Is there anything that has surprised you or that’s unexpected for what you have found in the federal policy world?
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:05:07):
Yeah, I think I thought that you would just come here and you would collect thoughts and ideas, put a really good bill together, and it would be kind of a competition of which was most important bill and ones that had adequate support. So I guess I expected a little more meritocracy as it relates to how bills get advanced.
Jason Bordoff (00:05:37):
In the quality of the ideas and the proposals.
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:05:39):
Quality of ideas and the importance of the ideas. And that is not the case.
Jason Bordoff (00:05:45):
What’s the reality?
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:05:46):
The reality is there’s an effort by the minority to just constantly jam up the schedule and take the floor time up. If you’ve realized how much. I mean, people see all this voting going on and so much of it is completely inconsequential voting on nominees. And it’s silly to me that you take up this huge body of people here in the Senate that are. I mean, it’s an amazing amount of talent around these places. And people that are really dedicated to the country, they’re not doing these jobs for money.
Jason Bordoff (00:06:23):
You’re not just talking about the members, you mean the staff here?
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:06:24):
The staff and everybody. Yeah. I mean, it’s amazing the amount of talent that exists around here. And yet so much of the time on the floor time gets tied up by very inconsequential issues versus really meaty, important topics for our country. And so that’s been very surprising to me.
Jason Bordoff (00:06:47):
And I’ve heard you on other conversations like this one observe that you find Congress often prioritizes sort of partisan wins over long-term problem solving.
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:06:58):
For sure.
Jason Bordoff (00:06:59):
I imagine that has been a source of frustration.
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:07:01):
For sure. Just really surprising to me. And it’s become cultural. If it wasn’t cultural, people would kind of say it under their breath and they might act that way, but they wouldn’t say it out loud. And it’s very normal for people to kind of, “Well, of course I’m doing it that way because that’s what it’s going to take to get reelected or that’s what it’s going to take for a party to get reelected.” So I think it’s just become kind of the norm, unfortunately. And I would expect that more in the House with the Representative because they’re constantly in an election cycle and I would kind of expect that. But in the Senate, that’s alive and well too. So anyway, that’s disappointing. I mean, people kind of laugh at me when they hear me talk virtuously about why aren’t we just here doing what’s best for the American people? And people kind of just realize how naive I am when I say stuff like that. But I still keep saying it.
Jason Bordoff (00:08:03):
And do you feel, because you have said, “I’m here for a short period of time,” do you feel more free to just put all that aside and focus on what you’re trying to do?
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:08:11):
Yeah, I for sure do. But with that, I mean, the good news is when you’re short-term and you’re not running, you’ve got plenty of freedom to do what you think is right, but it doesn’t lessen the burden of the timeframe that’s tied up by that. And it certainly doesn’t take away the way things are done around here, which is through committees and lots of other things that stand in the way of really getting to what’s most important for the country. So I mean, there’s not very many people on either side of the aisle that will tell you they don’t think permitting reform is extremely important and that it’s really something we ought to get to and that we’ve got a short window to get it done. There’s very few people that will say that. And I would suggest that there is a limited, other than the fact that people are used to negotiating so much with each other and make sure the other side doesn’t get a win, there’s not that much argument about what needs to be reformed in terms of permitting.
(00:09:14):
I mean, there’s a few sticky issues around the edge, but most of it isn’t really an argument about what’s best. Most of it’s an argument about, am I going to make it look like you got to win versus I got to win? So that’s kind of surprising to me sometimes. Yeah.
Jason Bordoff (00:09:27):
So I guess let’s jump in and talk about what that looks like. I mean, as you said, there’s not many people in an era of abundance and data centers and we have to build and we need more energy and that’s a competitive economic issue for the country, a security issue for the country. Not many people who disagree we need to do that better than we have in the past. There also doesn’t seem to be that many people are super optimistic it’s going to get done this year. Maybe I’m wrong, tell me if I’m wrong, but why is that? Where’s the disconnect between the importance of it and what we’re able to do?
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:09:53):
Yeah. Again, I think part of it is there’s a perception from the Democrats that there’s no reason for them to do anything that would be positive here ahead of the midterms. The narrative of, gosh, the Republicans, the GOP and the Senate have got nothing done here in the last year. It’s just something that people want to harp on. But that is so unfair to Thune and Barrasso from my perspective. I think they do an amazing job, but it’s hard to do anything if the other side is just saying….
Jason Bordoff (00:10:36):
And to be fair, that might look the opposite if the other party were in charge.
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:10:39):
For sure. I don’t even say that really as… Now, I would tell you, I actually have been very impressed with John Thune in particular as a leader that I really do think he tries to put the country first. And I’ve been extremely impressed by that. He doesn’t seem to waiver on that principle. He’s got a lot of issues to deal with to try to see that happen. But he’s pretty, I think, very straightforward and somebody that really cares about the country. So I’d be the last person I know right now in the Senate that would try to put blame on him because I’ve seen him stand up some pretty tough issues for what he thinks is the right thing for the country.
Jason Bordoff (00:11:21):
So when you said there’s broad agreement on what that reform needs to look like, it is hard to build. We know it takes years and years to get projects done from renewables and transmission to oil and gas pipelines. You were squarely in the midst of some of those midstream projects that got blocked before you took this role. And my sense is it’s a pretty broad range of potential barriers at the federal, at the state, at the local level that make it hard to get stuff done. So when you say there’s pretty clear consensus on what the priority should be, talk about what those priorities are.
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:11:50):
Well, I mean, if you look at what really needs to get reshaped, it’s the environment that NEPA creates, that our NEPA laws today create, make it extremely ripe for litigation. And to be able to hold up projects, to take an approach of sue and settle and actually raise money and make money on the sue and settle approach. So it’s not as much the. And a lot of times I think people want to try to blame it on the federal agencies, and it’s really not so much the federal agencies that are the problem. It’s the litigation that they’re faced with that causes them to have to be super careful about it. So I think taking on NEPA reform in a way that you deal with litigation and you make sure that it’s actually only the parties that could be harmed that are actually have standing.
(00:12:55):
And importantly, changing some of the judicial standards. For instance, today in many of the statutes, it’s arbitrary and capricious is the judicial standard. So if you’re denied a certificate, a court has to find that a state agency was acting in an arbitrary and capricious manner. Well, that’s really. If a general counsel for a department, for a state environmental agency is doing their job at all, it’s really hard to find for sure. And mostly because they’re not part of the overall 401. I’m sorry, they’re not part of the overall EIS effort. EIS Environmental Impact State is supposed to be a process to wrestle with all the different constituents on what’s the best route for this linear infrastructure, whether it’s transmission line or pipeline, highway. The goal there is to say, let’s get everybody’s vote on the table and let’s find a way to make the most environmentally friendly route that we can find.
(00:14:09):
The states have taken the approach that under the Clean Water Act, and particularly the 401 water quality certificate, that they don’t have to be a part of that, that they can do their review after the EIS is completed. So if you think about the term arbitrary and capricious within that, you go into a process that says, “Let’s figure out the very best route for this.” And everybody’s at the table and there’s all kinds of considerations. Communities, landowners, highway departments, I mean species from both the state and the federal fish and wildlife. I mean, the list goes on and on and on for the number of agencies that are involved in this process. But to the degree that the state says, “Well, we’re going to reserve our right under the 401 water quality certificate to not be part of the EIS. We’ll only issue our EIS after the fact.” They then can single out whatever their issue is that they’ve decided to come up with.
(00:15:14):
They can single that out outside of the EIS. So there may be very good reason for the state to say, “Well, we don’t think you should cross the stream here. We think you should cross it over here.” Even though the highway department in this other case said, “No, you can’t cross it there because we’re going to be putting a new bridge through there. So you have to put it over here.” Well, when the judge goes to look at that and state denies you and goes to look at that, the state says, or sorry, the judge says, “Well, wait a second. The state just had this requirement for you to move it.” And that’s all we can look at. We can’t look at the underlying EIS process. So that is not arbitrary and capricious. And if you say, “Well, gosh, we can’t move it there because this other issue exists,” doesn’t make any difference.
(00:16:03):
The court’s only looking was the state being arbitrary and capricious and requiring that. So it causes a do loop where you have to go back to the start of the EIS and go through that all over again. And there’s nothing that holds the state to saying that they liked that route in the first place on the second go around. So it’s really a process problem. It’s certainly not an environmental standards problem. Nobody is coming at permitting reform saying, “Hey, we want to lessen the impact. We want to lessen the environmental requirements and conditions.” Nobody’s even thinking that, but the process does need to be fixed. So that’s a great example of how it’s just process problem. It’s not a content or an environmental protection issue.
Jason Bordoff (00:16:53):
You’re describing that problem of the state review in sort of abstract terms. And I don’t remember every detail, but you’re describing a circumstance related perhaps to New York State and a high profile pipeline that you were trying to build. Sure, sure. Is that story you just told your sense as CEO of Williams of what happened with the Constitution?
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:17:13):
I’m not going to pin down the details of that, but it is —
Jason Bordoff (00:17:16):
An example.
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:17:17):
It’s an example. And it’s happened multiple times. I mean, people don’t even realize how many times this happens and you get rung around and you can’t really go make it public. You just make things worse, especially when the state has all the cards in their hands. You really don’t win anything by calling them out on this stuff because at the end of the day, you still have to get a permit and a certificate in that case.
Jason Bordoff (00:17:43):
So what is the role of states and the rights for states to have a say in what infrastructure they want to build and how they want to build it and the 250 streams that the Constitution was crossing or whatever? I presume you think states have a role to play.
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:17:56):
Absolutely. And my position is that a few things on this. One, they ought to be part of the overall EIS process. So it ought to be a concurrent review with EIS and all agents. I mean, we need one lead federal agency. In this case it would be the FERC, but we need one lead federal agency that you either opt in to be a part of the EIS or you waive your rights to take issue. So that first and foremost. Secondly though, there does need to be standards for water quality established. And so today the state can arbitrarily change those water quality standards however they choose. So you would think that was pinned down. It’s not. So making sure that there’s standards that are consistent with the 300 series in the Clean Water Act, which actually describes the standards for water quality issues is a second thing.
(00:18:56):
So setting standards. And then third, making sure that the judicial standard under which you could take on that a state has to have reasonable and compelling evidence that there’s actually going to be harm to the environment. And don’t forget, the Corps of Engineers also does their full study on the same exact issue. So you talk about overlap between the states and the feds. The Corps does their own study under the 404 permit. They do their own study on water quality impact as well. So this is not like a process where we’re saying, “Hey, let’s really straighten this out to where there’s only one agency, only one look at this.” Having a state and a Fed look at the states and Fed, it goes through everything. It’s species. I mean, if you look at the duplicate of agencies between State and Fed, and we’re only saying, we’re not even trying to straighten that out.
(00:19:56):
We’re simply saying they all need to be brought into the same concurrent process. So
Jason Bordoff (00:20:01):
That’s the Clean Water Act. You said there’s one of the top-line bullets of the main points of when people talk about permitting reform.
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:20:08):
Yeah. So judicial standards under NEPA, which we talked about a little bit, but making sure this arbitrary and capricious language is not a loophole. And in most cases, that arbitrary and capricious language needs to be changed. Second –
Jason Bordoff (00:20:25):
Sorry, just on that point, are you talking about timelines for judicial review or are you talking about Seven Counties on the scope of the review of what should be included?
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:20:33):
Well, that too. So I mean, there’s a lot of judicial reform in our bill that we laid out. There is a lot of judicial review changes in NEPA. But none of it is in any way, shape or form unfair. It just creates certainty. But another issue along the same lines on NEPA is making sure that the judicial branch and the executive branch are limited to not being able to vacate a lawfully issued certificate. And that is a huge issue. It’s big for the transmission developers. It’s big for winds. To pipelines. Big for pipelines. And in fact, when I was at Williams, we did have the regional energy access, which was a billion dollar project that went from Pennsylvania into New Jersey. Project was finished. It was up and operating, and the DC circuit vacated our certificate. And so thank goodness the FERC gave us an emergency and we eventually won that.
(00:21:44):
But that’s scary for a company that’s in the business of building pipelines. And
Jason Bordoff (00:21:48):
How should that work, assuming one thinks there needs to be judicial review? Agencies might make mistakes. There is a role for judicial review. How do you get that balance right where companies know they can move forward, invest, maybe begin projects, and you still are allowed to have judicial review?
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:22:02):
Yeah, I think it’s fine. I mean, we certainly would suggest that there can be a remand and that the court has a right to remand the agency on what the answer they want, but it shouldn’t fall immediately to vacating the certificate. And that’s what was wrong in this case. And this was fascinating because the claim was that FERC, not anything the company had done. So in other words, we, the operator and the people that made the investment did everything we were told to do, but that FERC hadn’t done their job in analyzing the greenhouse gas emissions study on it. That was the claim. So think about that situation where you’ve got one branch of the government telling the other branch of the government they didn’t do their job, but the people that actually followed the law and made the investment are told tough. It’s not your fault, but you still wasted a billion dollars.
Jason Bordoff (00:23:07):
That comes, I think, tell me if I’m right, to that. I mentioned the Seven Counties decision before. The idea that the Supreme Court has now said, and your legislation I think is along these lines, NEPA review, environmental review should be about the immediate impacts of the project, not greenhouse second and third order effects.
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:23:24):
Exactly. And in fact, there was no law on the greenhouse gas emissions. Why in the world the court agreed that there should have been when there wasn’t any law on that is kind of fascinating to me. But anyway, that situation where you as the operator falling along lawfully what you were told to do, and the US government tells the other US government wrong, but it wasn’t the US government’s money that got spent and wasted.
Jason Bordoff (00:23:57):
I think the reason I’m ask — trying to get at is I think at a certain level, high enough level, this conversation feels like a no-brainer. Abundance, we want to build things, we need energy to be cheap in this country. We need to meet rising power sector demand and win the competitive AI race with China, permitting reform. And then when you get to the details, it’s harder. And there are real tensions. I just want to uncover what some of those are and how you respond to concerns. And tell me if you agree, judicial review may be one of the sharpest fault lines there where when you hear concerns on the left and the environmental movement that, well, for too many permitting reform means streamlining to the point of weakening environmental protections, they’ll point to things like judicial review. So how do you —
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:24:43):
Which is great if somebody could actually point to a case where the company themselves either provided false information, they didn’t comply with what they were told to comply, and that person came back and said, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey, these guys lied to you in their certificate and it’s their fault.” But to say the government is the one that faulted, but it’s your fault, is completely out of line. And in those cases, I mean, obviously, if there was some immediate physical harm that was done, and there is conditions around this, if there is known harm that can’t be undone, then fine. But that’s not the situation in these cases at all. And so I mean, the good point is Seven Counties, I think, really starts to put some guardrails around —
Jason Bordoff (00:25:51):
And maybe, just for people listening, you can remind them what the main finding there.
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:25:56):
On Seven Counties. Yeah. Yeah. So Seven Counties said, one, you can’t just make up new regs and requirements outside of what your specific agency is responsible for, even though NEPA really. I mean, I was thrilled to see that, but in precedence over time, NEPA had become, “Well, yeah, you’re overfishing wildlife, but you should have looked at this climate condition that’s going to change things in 50 years.” So that’s kind of speculative impact in the future. Seven Counties said you can’t look at that. You have to stay within your swim lanes of responsibility, and you have to have evidence that there’s actually going to be impact. And so I actually think it’s a huge finding that’s going to change things pretty dramatically for the future. But I would say the judicial branch has done their job on this, trying to clean that up. Legislators, we have not done our job on this. Seven Counties isn’t going to fix everything.
Jason Bordoff (00:27:05):
The point is if you’re trying to build something like, say, an LNG export project, you would want to say, what does it do to the environment? The wetlands that might be near in Louisiana or something. But the idea is some have, as we’ve seen, that, well, how much gas is exported? What does that do to the global price of gas? What does that do to demand for coal in Asia? That these are too far afield from the immediate projects?
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:27:29):
So it has to be specific to the project, has to be kind of immediate impact from that particular project. So that’s a very big finding. I
Jason Bordoff (00:27:39):
Saw that when I served in the first Obama term, and the Keystone pipeline was the big political issue, the thousands of pages of environmental review there, and a lot of questions about what it would mean for global oil markets and demand for alternatives and renewables. And there’s a lot of analysis that has to go into thinking about that.
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:27:56):
Right. And so it does become very speculative. And I’ve talked to Chris Wright since post the LNG halt that happened.
Jason Bordoff (00:28:10):
This was Biden pausing new permits.
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:28:12):
Yeah, Biden. And him going back and reviewing the actual documentation that was within the confines of the DOE. And the findings were actually very positive towards LNG. And there was a whole host of scenarios that were studied, but the ones that were picked, which were kind of on a tail of all studies are the ones that said you shouldn’t do it. But the vast majority consensus scenarios said that LNG was actually beneficial.
Jason Bordoff (00:28:44):
Well they put a big 600-page report out at the very end of the administration, which was a little hard to make your way through. But I wrote a piece after it came out saying it’s federal law requires that you give a permit if it’s not contrary to the national interest. You should look at what it means for the national interest. And that might mean the environment, it might mean domestic gas prices. And actually their study found the impacts were pretty small on those things that they put out at the very end of the administration. But I guess I want to ask you what you said earlier, which is no one’s trying to lessen environmental review, cut corners, weaken environmental protections. And where that becomes, how do you strike the right balance in practice to say permitting an environmental review need to be more efficient, more predictable, more timely? We can probably agree that environmental groups sometimes have used those processes, not just to make sure an environmental process was followed, but to block a project entirely. And at the same time, there are projects that pose real environmental risks. And I don’t know what example one thinks of from Badger-Two Medicine decades ago to Pebble Mine to, I don’t know, pick a project that people think there’s real environmental issues here that need to be looked at. And you want to prevent permitting environmental review from being a A tool to indefinitely delay, but you want to make sure that you’re not missing out on what this process was supposed to do, which is really uncover and surface real environmental risks that are at play here.
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:30:14):
Well, completely agree. I think that our current processes are so distrusted at this point, and people are so used to them just being political, that it’s really hard to separate the wheat from the chaff in this process today. So when you really do have an environmental issue, it’s really hard to know for the public today whether it is or not, because every single project has somebody opposing it. And so I would just say, I think that getting a process that lessens the amount of politicization of the answer, like the states being able to just arbitrarily come up with requirements, and then somebody saying that that violated environmental conditions. So said another way, if we actually had stated environmental standards and you had a process that you went through, that changing the standard is where we ought to be taking the time. And once the standards are set, then we ought to be able to build to them.
(00:31:29):
But changing the standards on the fly in the middle of a project, which is the way a lot of this gets done today, that is really wrong. The pressure ought to be put on the agencies to establish good standards and give those standards time to exist and be understood by the market instead of right in the middle of a project, “Hey, we just decided to change the standards and you either spend this hundred million dollars doing this new study or we’re not even going to allow your application to be complete.” And that’s the kind of stuff that goes on today. So I would just say I actually, the good news is Williams, where I was for 40 years, was a company that really, really tried to do things right. Joe Williams, who was CEO there for a long time, I don’t know how many times I got asked, “What are we doing to make sure we left the place better than when we started?” And he was a very big believer in that.
(00:32:32):
And so I kind of grew up in that culture and I saw how many huge opportunities there were to actually help the environment because of the amount of money that we were spending. But if we were allowed to spend the money in the litigation fight and the value that gets destroyed these days, if we were allowed to spend that money on mitigation to actually improve the environment, I actually think that the process would actually allow us to improve the environment. But today it’s just a fist fight. Transco had a project one time that was going through the North Mountains in Georgia. And there was an old railroad tunnel there that was kind of Civil War era railroad tunnel. And it was out of service. And we found it in our survey and we thought, “This is perfect. We’re not going to have to deforest. We’ll be able to lay the pipeline through this area and we won’t have to deforest and we can lay the pipeline through the tunnel.” And we were working with the state to make that happen.
(00:33:39):
Went in and did a species test and we found a lot of bats in that tunnel. Wound up the bats had fungus, typical white ear or white nose fungus. And so the answer was you can’t go through there because you’re going to affect these bats. And we said, “Well, whoa, whoa, whoa. What if we were to work with the Georgia State University on developing a fungicide and actually see if we can help the bat colony instead of denying us?” Because at the end of the day, we put our pipeline through here. It’s not going to affect this bat colony once it’s installed. So we actually got to that point. State was very cooperative. I was like, “Wow, I love being a part of this company. I love our environmental scientists that come up with these solutions. What a cool deal.” Sierra Club showed up and started raising all kinds of cane about it and were threatening to shut down the project.
(00:34:39):
The state of Georgia, the fish and wildlife for the state of Georgia told them to cease and desist and get out of their hair. This is how it’s supposed to be done. And it made me very proud to see that we can find great environmental solutions if we’re working together in an honest way to accomplish that. So I actually feel like if we would clean our processes up, that we could get very quickly to much better mitigation answers than we do today. Because the process that we have today, it’s not actually protecting the environment. The fact that you have a do loop on a process instead of forcing a concurrent process, that is not improving environmental protections. So I’d be the first to admit, I’m probably biased and jaded from the seed I’ve sat in on that topic, but I am 100% convinced that the process can be improved without detracting from environmental protections.
Jason Bordoff (00:35:40):
And I think you’ve said you wanted to see a greater role for FERC as a federal agency to coordinate. And my question for you is, given other things the Supreme Court has done, like the leadership of these agencies can be more political now, not necessarily independent agencies. Does that create a new problem?
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:35:59):
I think there’s risk, but like I’ve said all along, I don’t know how many people have said, “Oh, you don’t want that to happen because then we’ve already had that.” And if the FERC is politicized, they can stop the project anyway.
Jason Bordoff (00:36:12):
And do you think states, you’re sort of saying they’re pointing to issues with the Clean Water Act and using, and I think putting words in your mouth, paraphrasing as an excuse because they don’t want this project at all. Should states just have the right to think differently about oil and hydrocarbon infrastructure projects, the importance they place on climate change? We want to lead on climate change, so we don’t want to allow those projects?
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:36:31):
No, I don’t think so. I mean, I think as long as there’s. That’s why we have interstate commerce. So no, I don’t think they ought to be able to dictate. I mean, if they want to go be able to elect at a federal level to get the right people elected to make law about carbon tax and a really sensible approach to managing carbon, then great. But managing it through the permitting process is a very poor idea.
Jason Bordoff (00:36:55):
So where do you see. I mean, we’re talking about oil and gas pipelines disproportionately, but obviously the difficulty with permitting and the reliability of permits, making sure they’re not going to get pulled as we saw with Equinor and offshore wind or other things. This is about renewables, it’s about oil and gas. Where’s the scope for bipartisan compromise here that allows this to move forward?
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:37:19):
I think it’s pretty strong. And the good news is that what’s different this time around is that the industries have come together on this. And this has been my pitch to industry for quite some time, which is we can sit when I was on the industry side, we can keep pointing our fingers at the politicians for being so partisan. But until we come together and say, “Hey, we need siding for any and all kinds of linear infrastructure.” And we don’t want the permitting process to be siding winners and losers on that. The siding of the infrastructure should not be trying to make law around what fuel sources we’re going to use in our country. If you want to make those, go win the elections and change the law. But it shouldn’t be through the permitting siding. And I think industry has actually come together on that.
(00:38:15):
When we rolled our bill out, we had ACORE there. We had hydropower there. So transmission industry, power transmission developers were there. So we’ve really worked hard to try to build a bill that is good for mining. It’s good for power transmission developers. It’s good for renewables. And we’re not trying to make winners and losers in this bill. And I do think that’s what’s changed because last time around with EPRA, it was a pretty good fight that went on between industries on that about who the winners and losers were. And I think this time around, industry is speaking with a much more constructive and consolidated voice.
Jason Bordoff (00:39:05):
So where do you see the fault lines when you get in the member’s elevator and someone you can name them if you want says, “That’s a terrible idea. I can never support that.” What are the concerns?
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:39:14):
The primary fault lines are the folks that, and I’m not going to name names here, but are the people that draw a lot of their support from NGOs. And the NGOs are not willing to. Some of them are. I mean, there’s some moderate ones that are being constructive and responsible. There’s others that definitely don’t want to see litigation reform in NEPA because it’s their livelihood. And there’s ones that don’t want to see the Clean Water Act issues resolved because it’s been their tool of choice for quite some time. So mostly it is just people that have that as their primary source and base. The moderate dims, I’m telling you, there’s very little of that group that says, “Hey, we shouldn’t.” If you sit down and say, “This is the process we started off with, which was kind of the principles of permitting.” And we said, “Can you agree on this?
(00:40:20):
If we can come up with a bill that can accomplish these things, are you on board with this?” Because it’s not motherhood and apple pie, but it’s close. And people have gotten on board with these principles and the bill that we rolled out very much sticks to these principles. And so I think because the industry in general is speaking. For instance, a great example, the 401 water quality certificate’s always been considered to be a pipeline issue because it’s been used over and over and over to stop pipelines. The only reason it hadn’t been stopped to use transmission lines, even though several states, Arkansas, Missouri, both stopped two really big important transmission lines that would’ve connected excess wind power in Texas and Kansas into the TVA, Tennessee Valley Authority market were stopped by the states mostly because the developers didn’t have federal eminent domain rights to push through those states.
(00:41:24):
If they got eminent domain the way all the new transmission bills are trying to be done right now by the Democrats, all of those bills would require federal backstopping authority. So in other words, if state stopped, you would have the ability to go to the FERC and gain federal imminent domain if it was deemed necessary and good for the public in the public’s best interest. So the 401 issue will become a red state weapon on transmission if you give federal siting authority. Your question me, well, shouldn’t a state just be able to stop you? Well, if they do, they’ll be able to stop transmission too. And obviously that doesn’t make sense for our country. And so that’s, I think, really a winning argument that’s worked for us with the transmission developers. And folks like NextEra have been great supporters on this. They see these issues from all sides.
(00:42:27):
They talk about building all kinds of different infrastructure. They’ve been involved in all kinds of different infrastructure and they see this as important on that front. So it’s great to have people that have been there in the trenches and kind of seen these speaking and helping us bring support to both sides of the aisle.
Jason Bordoff (00:42:46):
Since this is audio, I will let everyone listening know what you put in front of me, which are your policy principles to get America building again. The approach must be energy source neutral, no subsidies explicit or implied. No single state veto of a federal license project. A single efficient federal review process overseen by a lead agency, no degradation of environmental protection, and then lawfully issued final permits have to be durable and respected. Most of those seem pretty common sense. Can I ask you about the subsidies one? Because you mentioned earlier, if you want to make policy one direction or another, climate policy have a carbon tax have maybe a clean energy tax credit. Does that violate the idea that they should — you’re talking about from permitting —
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:43:23):
From a permitting. This is the whole issue. And it’s interesting that you asked that question because it tells us how confused we’ve gotten about what permitting ought to do. I mean, this is for the siding of infrastructure. This isn’t deciding bigger important things about energy use and climate change and those kind of things. So we’ve gotten used to the permitting process trying to be the relegator of, but it shouldn’t be.
Jason Bordoff (00:43:49):
Do you think if an administration offers a billion dollar payment to not develop a leasehold for federal offshore wind, that that’s a kind of wrong subsidy to achieve a permitting outcome?
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:44:02):
Yeah, I certainly don’t think that. I mean, right now, I think we need all forms of energy, frankly. So I wasn’t involved in that. Don’t know the details of that. But in general, I think we should be trying to. If somebody’s going to invest and it’s not going to be subsidized, in those cases, if it’s by utility and they’re building the rate base with it, you can question whether or not that’s subsidized or not, as you know, and you know how that works as well as I do and why utilities often support that approach. But nevertheless, we’re not going to fix state utility regs within the process that we have. That’s up for a state utility to decide if they think that’s a reasonable way to generate their power. But yeah, I don’t disagree with you at all that those kind of things we ought to be encouraging and enabling.
(00:45:02):
And so anyone wants to put their money at risk as a developer – To build energy. A developer, let’s hope that happens. If we keep going on the path we aren’t, we’re going to be having to beg people to put their money at risk.
Jason Bordoff (00:45:16):
Has this AI and data center issue changed the conversation around permitting reform?
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:45:23):
It’s interesting to me how many people want to see those two things divorced. And I don’t think they are divorced practically. I mean,
Jason Bordoff (00:45:30):
We need a lot more power. Power generation’s growing…
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:45:32):
And it’s the same issue. It’s a NIMBY, BANANA. I don’t know if you saw Jane Kleeb with BOLD Alliance came out last week in a Politico article and said that it’s never been so easy to be relevant as it is now in fighting data centers.
Jason Bordoff (00:45:51):
Right. Not just the energy, the power renewables or transmission or whatever, you’re talking about the data centers themselves
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:45:56):
Yeah. That has never been so easy to be relevant in her industry of stopping projects. There’s a lot of opposition. Yeah. She also said that she’s been doing this for 20 years and it’s just gotten easier and easier to block projects instead of build projects. And that’s her business, so that’s unfortunate for the rest of us. But that should scare us as Americans when we’re in a race right now to be able to have the best computing power in the world. That really ought to scare us. That’s such a vulnerability for our country in this war that we’re in. And I don’t mean the Iran war. I mean, just in general. So anyway, that really is concerning to me. And I think if our permitting processes don’t help enable projects versus disable projects, our goal ought to be to get as much capital as we can invest it into low cost infrastructure and low cost energy infrastructure as we can.
(00:46:58):
I mean, the US government and the citizens of our country would be better off if the energy infrastructure business overbuilt itself because I remember those days. I remember when if we could eke out a nine or 10% return on a pipeline project, that that was fantastic because everybody could build it. Now when you’re the incumbent, the kind of returns that you can extract today as an incumbent pipeline is really absurd. Not because it’s some great new technology, but because the – Because we’re constraining – Capacity, because we’re constraining new builds so bad. And people want to think, oh gosh, we really put it to the big, bad energy company. Well, you really didn’t. You really just put it to the American consumer.
Jason Bordoff (00:47:44):
You mentioned before how you see opposition coming from NGOs that have an agenda to try to block oil and gas infrastructure. I’m curious how you would respond to those who might say, look, we know the world needs oil and gas today and you want that to be inexpensive for people because we have an affordability problem, but we’re building pieces of infrastructure that are there for decades and we want the world to look very different from that group’s perspective in 10 or 20 years than it does today. We want to be using less oil and gas than we are today. And we’re concerned about building infrastructure that takes decades to pay back an investor. Is that a valid concern?
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:48:18):
Well, I’ll roll the clock back to 2014 when constitution pipeline was first proposed. And it was, we don’t want your cheap gas up here because we want to be able to invest in higher cost renewables. That was the response I got actually from Governor Deval Patrick in Massachusetts at the time. Well, let’s roll the clock forward now. So it’s now been 12 years. What has New England done? They’ve just burned more fuel oil. More and more and more fuel oil. And so to say that you’re saving the planet by cutting yourself off from economic choices, eventually they’re going to fix that problem because there’s not going to be any demand up there. I think it’s kind of funny that Governor Hochul came out against data centers in New York and I’m like, you already solved that problem by stopping energy development in your state. You didn’t really need to make more choice.
Jason Bordoff (00:49:24):
But it’s changed her position on some of these gas pipelines, right? Or not?
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:49:30):
I mean, didn’t change her mind on Constitution. But my point is that we’ve been saying this for a long time. And as long as the alternative is we’re going to burn more fuel oil is the answer. Or we’re going to say, well, we’re going to use offshore wind and it’s going to be nine cents a kilowatt hour. So that’s the reason our utility prices are higher because they won’t let us build these nine cents kilowatt hour. I mean, the problem is not when we have. Cost of power is cheap when there’s plenty of power. Cost of gas is cheap in New England when there’s plenty of gas. It’s in peak times that causes the price surges up there. And so to not build natural gas to be the backup as we build out renewables over time is kind of crazy to me. It’s like if you really are that concerned about climate change, why wouldn’t you want the next 10 years to save that fuel oil?
(00:50:33):
If you really think it’s that important, then it’s kind of the time value of the climate. And so that to me, I’ve kind of given up on people being really honest about that when there’s so much reduction in fuel oil in the Northeast to be taken out of the markets. And so that’s why I don’t take that comment all that serious anymore.
Jason Bordoff (00:51:00):
I just want to make sure we covered all the bases and what you think the key priorities for this umbrella called permitting reform is. It seems to mean different things to different people, so that’s what I just want to ask. But you talked about Clean Water Act 401, judicial review timeline, I think for judicial —
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:51:14):
Judicial review, judicial standards, vacatur. So on both – Sanctity of permit once it’s given. Sanctity of permits is key issue there. And then on the fringes of that, like in our bill we have the Cortez Masto’s mining [bill], which we think was really well written. And a lot of our bill actually took a lot of great work that’s been done in the house. The house has done a lot of really good work on this front. And we’ve adopted a lot of the things that came out of the house into a comprehensive bill. That sounds really easy, but it’s not. You have to kind of weave all those different permits together and the team’s done a really nice job of doing that. But those are kind of the major issues, but you also have things like NHPA and other things like that that have to be considered as well. What we didn’t take on was we didn’t take on cost allocation on electric transmission, not because we don’t think that’s going to have to be solved, but we’ve been hoping to adopt alongside ours a dim side transmission bill. And so we’ve been working to try to accomplish that.
Jason Bordoff (00:52:25):
You talked about how the constraint on building new infrastructure, say oil and gas pipelines is sort of a gift, I’m paraphrasing, to those who have the infrastructure today and the prices they can charge for it. Energy demand is growing in the US, power demand is growing for the first time in 20 years. Gas is a big part of that. We’re using more gas for data centers, for power generation, for industry, and of course LNG exports, we’re going to see a significant increase in. What does that mean for the outlook for domestic gas markets? It’s been striking how gas prices have barely gone up in the last few months with this Hormuz crisis when Asian and European LNG prices were near $20 per million BTU. It was less than $3 here. I think there’s growing concern. Maybe that’s not always going to be the case. We start to become more disconnected to these markets and maybe that’s a concern for US economic competitiveness. Do you share that concern?
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:53:18):
I think it’s certainly something to keep your eye on and monitor. And I do think that we’ve been living off of the off-gas bounty coming out of the Permian in terms of handling a lot of the growth. And the Haynesville growth has been pretty large where it’s easy to build infrastructure. So I think the ease of building infrastructure out of those markets has kind of kept us in the situation where we have an abundance. But if we start to rely on other basins for gas supply, whether it’s the Rockies or it’s Marcellus and Utica, if we start to rely on those basins for our growth and we don’t solve this infrastructure problem, that’s where our problem’s going to be. Senator King from Maine has always been a really big student of this issue.
(00:54:10):
When I was on the outside, he always pressed on me that, “Well, you can’t tell me that we’re not going to outgrow our. If we export all this LNG, you can’t tell me we’re not eventually going to put tons of pressure on price.” And I’ve said, “Well, with all due respect, New England has cut themselves off from low cost gas already. It isn’t going to affect them because the thing that’s constraining them is having access to gas in the first place. So you won’t even hardly be able to see it. When you’re having to pay the kind of prices they’re having to pay in the wintertime for their gas, you’re not going to see much. Your issue is pipeline constraint. It’s not wholesale gas price. And so I think that, and there’s a lot of areas that —
Jason Bordoff (00:54:59):
And it could feed it indirectly to manufactured goods and use it in other ways.
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:55:01):
That’s right. Yeah. So I think to answer your question, it could very well sneak up on us in terms of the demand. And I say that because I realize how much the extraordinary amount of power generation, gas-fired power generation that’s being built for off-grid power generation right now. And one project by itself is not all that big, but when you start adding it all up in terms of what all’s getting built right now, it’s a lot of gas demand that’s continuing to come strong at this space. And we’ve gotten used to our gas industry being able to keep up with that. But we’ve been relying on two sources that I question will be able to carry us in the next wave of growth in terms of Permian off-gas and the Haynesville growth. So I think if we —
Jason Bordoff (00:55:56):
And you’ve gotten used to this unusual circumstance, which is when there’s a shock in the Strait of Hormuz, oil prices go up around the world and gasoline prices go up in the US, even though we’re an exporter now, not a big importer. Gas markets haven’t worked that way. We’re sort of take that for granted. And that’s a pretty significant advantage for the US.
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:56:13):
But I do think that the reserves are there to carry us for quite some time, but it’s going to be a question of whether if we keep fighting ourselves on infrastructure over and over and we don’t allow ourselves to access where we do have reserves, that’s where it’s going to be a problem. Because just because we can build pipelines in Texas and just because we can build pipelines in Louisiana, and that’s what’s kind of kept us afloat, when we have to start relying on other resource areas to help pick up the load, that’s the piece that honestly concerns me.
Jason Bordoff (00:56:49):
I’m stepping back a little bit from permitting from just in our final minutes, but we’re talking about the significant shift from the US importing 60% of its oil to being a net exporter export surge in the last few months to help the rest of the world. SPR release was a part of that. But there’s growing concern that maybe at some point it’s hard to keep growing a million barrels per day per year and the quality of the resource declines and the ability for technology to offset that declines that maybe we’re starting to see the shale boom plateau, maybe even decline. What’s your sense of the outlook for US oil and gas?
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:57:25):
Well I mean, I think as long as we get price signals in it, I mean, nothing’s going to solve a problem where you take down the Strait of Hormous and then the Houthis start taking out the Red Sea. So you’re not going to solve those problems in the short term. There can’t be a strong enough market signal to give us enough time to respond to that.
Jason Bordoff (00:57:52):
Although even there, it’s pretty remarkable that oil averaged $100 a barrel.
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:57:55):
It’s amazing to me that we kept that as under control as we did. But it does show that to a certain degree, we have a fairly elastic market. I question how much of that might’ve been China pulling back on both demand and using their storage.
Jason Bordoff (00:58:15):
Your question meaning you’re not sure they really did?
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:58:16):
No, no, no. I think that one of the reasons we lived through that so easily –
Jason Bordoff (00:58:20):
Is because China reduced imports.
Senator Alan Armstrong:
Right. Yeah. And whether they did that through storage or they actually curtailed demand, I’m not sure about that, but certainly —
Jason Bordoff (00:58:27):
And they also restricted product exports, so they reduced their refinery amounts.
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:58:29):
So how much of that they still have up their sleeve if this continues is questionable in my mind in terms of before it really impact the rest of the market. But that’s pretty noticeable. I mean, that definitely saved, I think, helped save us from a pretty stormy price —
Jason Bordoff (00:58:50):
Well we had five and a half million barrels a day of extra pipeline capacity. Because to your point about infrastructure can help build resilience, Saudi Arabia and the UAE had been willing to pay an insurance premium in the form of pipelines that they only partially used for an event like this. And then we had pretty healthy inventories.
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:59:08):
And how smart is that? If you think about Germany, if Germany had built in advance, they had built the LNG import facilities, think about how cheap that would’ve been to have alternative infrastructure capacity versus being wed to one. So the concept of, gee, let’s just build just enough infrastructure that we need is so foolish from a national perspective.
Jason Bordoff (00:59:34):
Yeah. I’ve been thinking a lot about that, but the question is the kind of society’s willingness to pay an insurance premium, which is what it is, to have some infrastructure on standby in case you need it.
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:59:44):
But it’s so cheap compared to all the other things that we do to protect ourselves from that. Building that kind of infrastructure is – And
Jason Bordoff (00:59:53):
Europe did some of that in the third energy package with reverse flow capability they created a more interconnected market to help cope with disruption.
Senator Alan Armstrong (00:59:59):
But I always say this, it’s like politicians and bridges. When a bridge fails, it is everybody’s fault except for the politician that ignored the report from the engineer for the last 20 years saying that the bridge was in danger and that the budget got pushed off to not go do that. In the same ways for infrastructure, and if you look around right now and you see all of the reports from the ISOs and the RTOs saying that they’re really tight on the reserve margins in their areas and they’re going to have to have. Politicians are so good at not paying attention to facts. It’s just amazing to me.
Jason Bordoff (01:00:43):
There’s some pretty smart people in this building. Is that a lack of time? It’s because they have 20 issues on their desk at any given moment?
Senator Alan Armstrong (01:00:50):
They get by with focusing on the populist issues. I think it’s a product of the environment here. If people get by with doing it and the guy that wins is the guy that’s a loudmouth, that ignores the facts, but he’s a loudmouth and he drives off the populist issues, then if that’s who’s winning, then that’s. So what’s
Jason Bordoff (01:01:15):
Helpful for people outside to do to inform that process? If you’re running a research institute that’s trying to use evidence and facts as best we can, or a company or these advisory bodies like the National Patrol Council that you led, what do you see as effective now that you’re sitting in the seat receiving that information?
Senator Alan Armstrong (01:01:33):
Yeah, it’s a really good point. I think one of the thing that’s dawned on me here is that the committee leads here, the committee chairs and the ranking members here dictate a lot of the timing and sense of urgency and so forth on the plan. So I think understanding who’s next in a chair, understanding what areas that you can really bring a sense of urgency to are really important. For instance, I will say one thing that happened that I thought was really interesting was when National Grid was trying to convince Governor Hochul that they really needed Williams’ Nessie pipeline to serve the Brooklyn and Long Island area, that expansion of that existing line, they brought her out to the facility and showed her that they were running 250 trucks around the city, diesel-fired trucks around the city to move LNG to their town border delivery points to keep the city up.
(01:02:51):
This physically is how we’re keeping our city up. And I think once they made that a little more. They’d been kind of bashful about wanting to rub anybody’s nose in that, but I think once they made it public and people acknowledged it, it was pretty hard in that case for Governor Hochul to deny that issue. So I think sometimes really getting people’s kind of drug into the issue is helpful. I mean, in case of a bridge, if you go out and say, “Okay, I’m letting you know we have delayed delivered a report to you showing you that this bridge could and will fail in the future if you don’t do something.”
Jason Bordoff (01:03:34):
In terms of just bringing it to conclusion with maybe where we might be headed and what the opportunities are for progress, for bipartisan compromise, if that exists anymore. And again, you mentioned earlier what some of the obstacles are, including maybe not the more moderate Dems, if that’s the right word, but those on the left who are just concerned about oil and gas infrastructure at all. On the other side, the idea that this administration that seems pretty unsupportive of renewables, particularly wind, solar to some extent, is that a significant obstacle? Do you see that more broadly in the Republican Party or is that less of a concern? And how do we bring everyone together that we need to make it easier to build lots of energy?
Senator Alan Armstrong (01:04:14):
I don’t think it’s a major concern within the legislative body. As long as people aren’t being asked to subsidize the renewables, I don’t see that as barring any legislation. And my argument to people that raise that, that say, “Well, we’re not going to do anything on this because your administration is being such obstructionist around wind and solar, and therefore we’re not going to do anything.” And my argument is, well, this is going to go on forever. Now is your time to legislate. If you don’t want this to happen in the future, now’s the time to legislate. Do you have the power to legislate the problem that you’re complaining about? Why don’t we get on and do this? We’ve both seen both sides of this. Oil and gas side seen this. Renewables have seen this. I can’t imagine that we don’t think it makes sense to come up with law right now that disarms that.
Jason Bordoff (01:05:15):
So what’s success look like by January? A bill would be one or a new law, but if you want to keep the ball moving forward, what does that look like?
Senator Alan Armstrong (01:05:23):
Yeah. I mean, I think the safest thing is that we’ll see a bill drop out of EPW and E&R, the Environmental Public Works Committee and Energy and Natural Resources Committee that will see a bill drop out from those four. So that’s Shelly Moore Capito’s chair of EPW, Sheldon Whitehouse’s ranking member, NEPW, and then Mike Lee, Senator Lee as chair for E&R and Martin Heinrichs as the ranking member. So those four, I think a lot of weight is on their shoulders to produce a bill, and I’m very hopeful that they will do that. I think we’ve been clear and the industry’s been clear within the details in our bill about the kind of things that are required. And I’m hopeful that those are delivered on within the work that they’re doing. But I think that’s the best path. And whether that gets dropped before Senate goes on recess here is kind of what people like myself are chewing their fingernails off over right now.
(01:06:31):
But that’s my hope. And as proud as I am of the work that my team did on creating, I think, a very comprehensive bill, I would like nothing more than that to be an article on the shelf and let them actually come up with a bill that’ll go right way through to get on the floor. And so that’s what I’m hoping for at this point.
Jason Bordoff (01:06:54):
Well, I know the clock’s ticking and you got a lot of work to do, so I really appreciate how generous you’ve been with your time. And it’s really valuable to see people with such significant leadership experience coming to spend time in public service. So thank you for your service.
Senator Alan Armstrong (01:07:06):
Thank you very much, Jason. Nice spending time with you today.
Jason Bordoff (01:07:14):
Thank you again, Senator Alan Armstrong, and thanks to all of you for listening to this episode of Columbia Energy Exchange. The show is brought to you by the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. The show is hosted by me, Jason Bordoff, and by Bill Loveless. Mary Catherine O’Connor, Caroline Pitman, and Kyu Lee produced the show. Gregory Vilfranc engineered the show. For more information about the podcast or the Center on Global Energy Policy, please visit us online at energypolicy.columbia.edu or follow us on social media @columbiauenergy. And please, if you feel inclined, give us a rating on Apple or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us out. Thanks again for listening. We’ll see you next week.
As the demand for power surges across the US, the debate over how to build energy infrastructure has reached a fever pitch. And while both sides of the aisle broadly agree that the current permitting process is broken, turning that consensus into actual legislation remains a challenge. So how do we define permitting reform, what does meaningful progress actually look like, and where do we stand today?
Alan Armstrong is keenly focused on those questions. After spending his entire career in the energy industry, he was sworn into the US Senate in March, representing Oklahoma. (Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt appointed him after Markwayne Mullin resigned to become US secretary of Homeland Security. Per Oklahoma law, Armstrong cannot run for reelection.) Senator Armstrong (R-OK) spent 15 years as CEO of Williams Companies, one of the largest natural gas infrastructure firms in North America. He is also the former chair of the National Petroleum Council and a founding member of Natural Allies for a Clean Energy Future.
Last week, Jason Bordoff spoke with Senator Armstrong about his legislative focus: permitting reforms aimed at streamlining energy buildouts. They discussed a bill that the senator has sponsored, the American Energy and Mineral Infrastructure Act of 2026, as well as the broader wave of reform efforts drawing bipartisan attention. The senator reflected on his time at Williams and how that informed his view on permitting policy. They discussed the role of judicial review, the power dynamic between federal and state regulators, and how growing energy affordability concerns are adding new pressure to pass meaningful permitting reform.
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