We completed what people didn't think to get done, which was a billion dollar...
moving gas out of Pennsylvania in New Jersey. Project got built. It was you know a great
feat by the permitting teams to work with the states, work with local landowners, work with school boards that were going to benefit and they had more impacts, work with the unions, to have them bringing their voice to the table, so really great grassroots effort to get that project permit. It got permanent. It was up and running. It was running at near full load during the middle of the winter and a federal court came out and they painted the certificate.
And said you can no longer operate because the certificate was was not issued correctly by effort because FURK did not look at the greenhouse gas for a while. There is not a law about greenhouse. Americans are capable of achieving extraordinary things when they have the freedom
men-dopportunity to do so. This is American Potential.
Everyone, welcome to the American Potential Podcast. I'm your host, David Frohn. Summers upon us, which means summer travel time. In junior math, besides the travel that the podcast is planned, do you have any plans to drive anywhere the summer? Oh, I don't have any specific plans just yet, but I have a friend who lives in Arizona and I usually make it a point to get out to Arizona a couple times a year, so I'm thinking about
road tripping it. But I'll say the podcast keeps me traveling enough that sometimes I'm like,
“"You know what, I think I'm just going to stay home for a little bit."”
I also know you're a driver. I mean, you're in with Southern Colorado and, you know, I know we went to Montana, you drove up there. I guess I can't blame a guy for wanting to drive in that part of the country because it's pretty gorgeous. Megan, so I like a good drive myself. I don't mind driving a number of hours because it just seems to be a nice time to send yourself and kind of see this beautiful country. It is such a great thing. I love a good road trip
and getting out, seeing how much of the country there is to see that. That's one of the things we stay and usually within a few miles of our homes, our work, our offices, wherever, but getting out and seeing the country and seeing it by road is one of my favorite things. Yeah, I hope as Sam goes on, I'm going to, someday I'll get into a rented RV or something and drive out west. But I've been blessed to be able to get to a lot of beautiful areas in this
country and there are so, so many. So now I want to share with my kids and make sure we, we see that and make that part of our summer plans. Got to love it. The family road trip. You can't read it. You know, energy plays a big role in our summer plans. You know, are you hoping to get on a plane to get where you want to go or loading up the car for a road trip? And when it comes
“to keeping your house cool during the hot summer months, where are you setting your thermos at at?”
So what if Washington could make energy production less expensive? Simply by getting some of the road blocks out of the way? We'll talk about that with today's guest who spent about 40 years working in the energy industry. He's the newest U.S. senator replacing Mark Wayne Mullen after he was named a new secretary of Homeland Security. I want to welcome to the podcast, Oklahoma U.S. senator Alan Armstrong. Senator, welcome. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, David,
glad to be here. Great. Well, you, I mean, you, you're, you just started. How's it been? You figured out where everything is? How are you enjoying your time? Good. You know, it's been a lot of learning. And, but I love learning and it's a new challenge. And, you know, I've been in the CEO of O role for about almost in chairman role for about 15 years. And so this was a big change, but one that I've really found fascinating and challenging. And, like I said, get to learn something
new every day. So it's been good. Ben, gosh, nine, most ten weeks now. So it feels like it's been a long time at this point. I don't know. Yeah, I imagine it seems like a long time, but then time flies, too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 10 weeks. Wow. Yeah. At the, um, I know as organizations, Americans are prosperity. We're pretty thrilled to have someone with your expertise and experience in the Senate. I mean, you know, it's such an energy production, such an important issue, especially right now.
And your experience is so crucial. So I'm excited for this conversation and for the work that you're
going to be able to do while you're there in the Senate. But I kind of wanted to go back to just the start of your career. I mean, your, your trained as an engineer. Um, you know, why do you want
“to be an engineer? And, uh, you know, what got you started in the energy industry in the first place?”
Yeah. Well, I think, you know, it's a bit natural to me. I always really like solving problems. I actually had two uncles that were engineers. And I got to see a lot of the interesting work
That they got to do.
Troy, him at the time. So it was kind of around the energy industry, uh, growing up to certain
degree anyway. But it was fascinating to me to see really large scale construction and, um, see what, uh, humans when they worked together, what they were capable of accomplishing on a large scale. And so that was really interesting to me from, from the day one. But I think, you know, learning to engineering really is a matter of teaching people to break down problems, taking very large problems, breaking them into smaller ones that can be achieved, uh, with groups people. And so
that, that was really interesting to me and continues to fascinate me. And I love a good challenge.
“And frankly, that's why this job's been so exciting to me as I do see it as a brand new challenge.”
Well, I, I guess, as a observer of the US Senate and of Congress in general, I'd say that we need more people who have that mindset. Holden seats and Congress. So what do, what would you, you, you rose over the 40 years? We're chairman, CEO of the Williams company. Well, for example, tell us what the Williams company does. And then sure, you know, what, what would you say, made you successful and then allowed you to move to the highest levels of the company? Yeah, thanks. Well, the Williams
company is a large scale energy infrastructure operator and handles about a third of the nation's
natural gas through its pipelines systems and plant. So it, what it does is basically picks up gas supplies and producing areas and moves that through long haul transmission lines to go all the way
“across the United States and delivers it into the key market centers. And so it delivers it to your”
utility. So if you're a customer of Duke or or con head if you're in New York, Williams probably carried that natural gas from a producing area to those utilities and then the utilities then distribute that to the home. So that's that's basically what Williams does in a nutshell. Today, it's gotten into providing more and more for the power for the AI movement and a lot of the
gas fired generation for that. So it's really taken off with really a lot of wind in
itself with the AI movement. Well, so as you moved up in the company, I'm sure you've seen the fact that regulation has and a heavily regulated industry. You know, what, as you start to observe that, you know, what was your impression of regulations and the effect on the industry? Yeah, you know, I would say it moved from when I was a project manager for the company. I was in the business of having to overcome those obstacles and bigger creative way to move through the regulatory process
to get things done. But one of the things I noted about that was your job as a project manager was to just take on that barrier, figure out the quickest way to get around it and to deal with it, and solve the problem and move on. It wasn't to say, okay, well, how do we make sure next time the regulation is a little more fitting to what said another way, your job was just to play whack them all, it wasn't to try to fix the process. And that's part of the problem, frankly, with the way
our regulatory process works today. You've got project managers there that their job is to get that project built as soon as they can. They don't have time to wrestle with the regulator to say, you know, really this makes no sense at all. But because you're usually just saying, okay, fine, we'll do it anyway and moving on so that you can expedite the project. The regulator themselves doesn't feel like they're doing their job if they don't come up with some new requirement every
time a new project, they'll how boring would it be to say, hey, we have a really good set of standards that we've been using, as long as you comply with these standards, we'll give you the permit and you can move on. I just, not what regulators, that's a great point. Yeah, declare navigator to do. And if, and if the project manager is saying, is not going to push back on that and is just going to say, yeah, thank you, Thur can have another, then that's, and that's kind of the way the permitting
process is built up. And then on top of that, you have the, the NGOs and the environmental opposition that frankly makes money by fights and and trying to stir trouble up on a project.
“And that's how they raise their money, frankly, is my villainizing the corporation. And so”
there's not really very many people in that process on the on the ground floor, they're actually saying, hey, how do we actually make this better for our country? How do we actually
Streamline this process so that we can get the work done?
that actually knows how to do that doesn't have time to deal with that. They're just trying to
clear the next hurdle and get on to it. And they're not trying to, you know, improve our process. It's not not because they're, you know, bad people, they just literally don't have time to deal with it. And there's a lot of times where today there's so many regulators, both state and federal that are duplicative. There's a lot of times when there's mutually exclusive requirement. So
“a state regulator will say, you have to install your soil erosion control on this project this”
way if you want the permit for me. And the feds will say, no, no, no, you have to do it my way. Sometimes those ways are actually mutually exclusive. Wow. And so if you're the project manager,
you're sitting there saying, what somebody just pick, I don't really care which way we do it.
I just need to have certainty, but the regulators will just kind of cross their arms and say, it's not my problem either do it my way or where you're not getting the permit. And both of those are required to move the project ahead. So those are the kind of things that have really made the world of getting big large scale infrastructure built these days, really difficult. Yeah, I guess I don't know how you would de-conflict that other than the project doesn't move forward.
“I mean, that's terrible. Yeah. Well, I used to spend a lot of time saying, okay, let me please come”
to the field and let me show you why we can't do both of these. And we're not trying to cut corners
here. We just literally can't do it both ways. And so you'll actually go out to projects these days
and you'll see two completely different erosion control set up on the project and the amount of plastic that gets consumed and thrown away on that. If people really looked at that and thought, wow, if I was really trying to protect the environment, would I really consume all this plastic and produce all this plastic for two different erosion control systems? So those are the kind of things that if you're a project manager or you're in the business like I've been of watching this,
it is super frustrating because we're not we're not protecting the environment any better.
“We're simply just making it longer and slower to get projects done. Most big operators these days,”
they are not trying to cut corners. I would tell you that is that idea hasn't hit people's heads in a long time. They are literally just trying to get it done and it done in the most environmentally responsive way. But a lot of times there's actually a lot of things that prevent that from happening as mentioned. So in your experience is running an energy producer, but then now in the US Senate is there. There are any particular regulations that you think are most stone-erous or like a regiment
that's really holding us back the most? Yeah, thanks for the question David. You know, the single most weaponized tool out there to stop a project these days. Surprisingly, is the 401 water quality certificate that is issued by state. And most of these big long-haul interstate projects are going across multiple states. Sometimes there's a lot of benefit in that particular state for the project and sometimes there's not. But it's still interstate commerce that's
required to the degree. It's not. Sometimes you'll see it become a political football and the state has effectively the right to veto a project under what is called the 401 water quality certificate. Even though that is completely duplicative to the core Army Corps of Engineers 404 permit. So back when the Clean Water Act was written, the language was written in a way to say, well, the states have at least have a right to raise their concerns. And that right to raise their concerns
has over time turned into veto rights for a project. And so if you go and look at all the major big, linear energy infrastructure projects that have been stopped, it has been stopped by the 401 water quality certificate. And so boy, is this nerdy? I mean, I'm actually trying to get people to understand that. But if you don't fix that problem, and believe me, I could go a lot deeper on this. But if you don't, if you don't fix that problem, you're going to continue to have a country that
finds it very difficult to build interstate infrastructure across our nation to move energy from where it's abundant and available areas where it's constrained. And so today, you have places like New England that sit 120 miles away from some of the lowest price natural
Gas in the entire world, not in the country, but in the entire world.
time, it pays some of the various prices in the world for natural gas because 120 mile pipeline
“across the state of New York can't be built because New York doesn't see a whole lot of benefit”
into that for them. Wow, that's a great point. Well, let's look at some of the legislation
that is perfectly any of the federal level, the first being the speed act. What would the
speed act do and what issue would it help address? Yeah, you know, great work by the house, by the way, the house has been delivering bill after bill that make a lot of sense. Bruce Westerman from Arkansas, it's done a fantastic job. Congressman Guthrie from Kentucky, a lot of really good work that's gone on over there. And the the speed act, what really dealt with a lot of the judicial reform issues as well, which, which when you say judicial reform,
you lose a lot of people there as well. What you're really talking about is not having a bunch of litigation, almost almost built into the process. And people say, well, it's those, you know, it's those big bureaucratic federal agencies that are the problem that really cause all this bureaucratic red tape. And that's actually not the case. The agencies actually work pretty hard, particularly agencies like the FERC actually work pretty hard to try to streamline these processes.
The problem is, because the judicial reform in there lets anybody and everybody file a suit and
stop a project, that gives a lot of leverage to the judicial process. And so putting some judicial reform that puts limits on who can actually file suit and what the remedy is for those suits. So
“that's a really important issue that needs to be taken on. And, and as well, that bill was well”
has some timelines in it. I would tell you that timelines work sometimes, but they are not a curall. And the reason that a lot of, you know, people that haven't been in the process of actually getting this stuff built, don't know is that if you have a shot clock for instance that says that an agency
has to give you an answer within six months, let's say. They, almost always starts when you have
a notice of complete application. So in other words, an agency that doesn't want that to happen or feels like they're getting squeezed on time, they just never start the clock. They never give you a notice of complete application. They keep coming up with, well, we want this eye daughter to this key cross. And so you, you just never really start the clock. So it has its limitations. And I, you know, people are very well intended putting those kind of requirements in there.
But if you, if you don't have something that independently stops, starts the clock, that causes the problem within within those bills. And that's a good example of that. So, anyway, really good, really good effort. Really deals with a lot of the judicial reform
“issues that need to be dealt with. And I think, you know, if we could get language like that path”
as part of a larger bill in the Senate, we would be knocking out quite a bit. So it's interesting to be that you have particular insight to the process coming from, you know, having run a company that's being heavily regulated. What do you see as the biggest maybe disconnect or blind spot for either senators or regulators with regard that that that you can expose and help people make better policy because you've been the guy on the other side who's
trying to get a project done. Yeah, you know, it's a great question. And one of the things that don's on me in being in the Senate is the huge breadth of issues that a senator has coming at them on a regular basis. And just like in a conversation like this, I'm constantly thinking, oh, man, I'm going to deep on this. I mean, this is I'm getting nerdy on giving this explanation. You have that issue and, you know, in great depth around here where people like to the degree,
it really takes hard digging in, work, really understanding the details. That's not what this body's all that good at frankly. They are in spots. I mean, there's some credible experts in all different fields. And that's, you know, great to see. But getting a whole body to understand
That, hey, don't just pass a permitting bill and say, patch yourself on the b...
you have to get these details right. This thing has been, this beast has been growing for a long, long time and to really take it on effectively. We can't just put some patches on it. And so that,
“that I think is the thing that people tend to lean to is just say, just get a bill done to say,”
we got a bill done because if you think about something like permitting, who's going to know in the next two or three years if that was done right or not? You know, it's such a slow, long-term process that it takes a long, it's not going to change gasoline prices tomorrow. So it's not a hot political issue because it's not going to be a snap your finger and immediate gratification kind of an issue. It's a very long-term issue that needs to be dealt with. And so I think
that's one of the things that I've learned here is that, you know, having the, having the detailed knowledge is great, but you really have to be able to give people examples and compelling examples around how things are not getting done to actually get their attention on it. I'll tell you one thing has really been helpful is that the cabinet, in particular Secretary Wright and Secretary Bergham have been involved in trying to get some of these projects permitted and they've seen
front and center how they actually get stopped. They've seen the 401 water quality certificate get abused. And so they, it's nice. I mean, that's a really good thing when you've been able to drag them alongside some of these permitting battles and they've kind of seen firsthand. It is result of that they're telling Congress, hey, if you don't fix this part of the problem,
“don't bother bringing. So I think that's really good that they've, you know, engaged in their”
staffs of engaged so heavily in some of those permitting process. Yeah, I imagine having some,
I imagine they're happy to have your expertise on board as well. So the second piece of federal
legislation is the Permit Act. What would this do? Yeah, the Permit Act is, does take a pretty good swipe at the 401 water quality certificate in attempts to address that. I think there's some, you know, more specific things to them, but it really does try to tackle that. I think it's a, you know, a nice piece of legislation and, you know, really solid effort to get at that. So so that's one of the key issues that Permit does. And as well as it also takes on some of the
novaicature language as well, saying that, and there's really relate somewhat to certainty. So
“I'll give you a great example. This was, this is a fascinating example. But when Williams built”
about three years ago now, I guess, we completed what people didn't think could get done,
which was a billion dollar pipeline moving gas out of Pennsylvania into New Jersey.
Project got built. It was, you know, a great feat by the permitting teams to work with the states, work with local landowners, work with school boards that we're going to benefit from the Advalorm tax, work with the unions to have them bringing their voice to the table. So really great grassroots effort to get that project permitted. It got permitted. It was up and running. It was running at near full load during the middle of the winter and a, a federal court
came out and vacated the certificate. Oh, and said, you can no longer operate, because the certificate was was not issued correctly by first, because first did not look at the greenhouse gas for a while. Well, there is not a law about green hat. They were saying that the study wasn't done adequately to show what the indirect impact of greenhouse gas emissions was associated with project, even though there wasn't a law requiring that. But but a very politicized issue,
we were explaining to people, listen, like, do you really need to, like, before somebody pulls this trigger, there are going to be people freezing to that. Like, this pipeline is that full load and it's not making, you know, ice cream. It's like keeping people's homes warm and, and you better, better know what you're doing here. Thank goodness the FERC stepped in and issued an emergency order and allowed the pipeline to continue to operate. But then think of yourself as the CEO of
that company going and telling your board, hey, guess what? We just spent a billion dollars.
And it may be, even though it's contracted for 20 years, it may be all for not because we may not be able to operate this any longer because nothing we did wrong, but because of our permitting process.
So that's the kind of, so the permit bill actually was taking a swipe at that...
has no vaquature to language in it saying that a court doesn't have the right to vacate a certificate that's been lawfully issued by nature. That's a subtle story. Well, sorry, I kind of want to ask you, as we wrap up, when did it occur to you that you might like to be a senator, or actually just wanted to be involved in the public policy process? I mean, it's pretty different from what you're doing. A lot of people would have thought you might want to just, you know, retire,
“go live a good life and look back on a very successful career. Why'd you kind of jump into this?”
You know, honestly, you know, I've been blessed in ways I never dreamed of, you know,
when I was growing up on Ranch, you know, Oklahoma. And I really wouldn't want to sit around and gripe about what other people aren't doing and knowing that this is a huge problem for our country. Like if we can't, if we can't learn to build out the infrastructure that it takes to power our world and grow it, we will get run over the top of eventually, just a matter of time that that happens. And so to sit back and not use the knowledge I have and the passion I have
around this for the benefit of our country, frankly, just felt very, very selfish. And the governor of Oklahoma, who's been really, I think, a very principled leader for that. It asked me to do it.
And his hard guy, given what he's, you know, sacrificed on his part for the benefit. It was kind of a
hard person to tell, no, I'm just going to be selfish and going through my called Mandy cap. So,
“you know, I think it's not much more complicated than that. I will be, I keep telling people,”
please don't make me be a grumpy old man. If we can't get this done and done effectively, because I'll be very disappointed if I do spend this time and we don't get something effective done. But good news is, I've got such a great team around me that it's like the reason they're doing this is they know how dedicated we all are as a team to getting this done and they've kind of got, we kind of almost have a singular mission around this. And so it's kind of nice to have such
clear focus and such great expertise around me as a team and that's really making a difference. Frankly, it's just being able to be so singular focused on this issue. You know, AFPs have been going around the country talking about permitting reform, you know, highlighting different sites and projects that either stopped because of the government, permitting process or, you know, our, our, in danger of closing and it's so many different
resources. So it just seems to me, so common, sensical that we, we want to unleash this ingenuity and the resources that are available. And there's so many private entities that want to do it and the benefit is so clear to all of us. But maybe it's not common sense, go to everyone and that's where we're happy you're there in the Senate. Yeah. Well, thank you. I do think that both sides of the aisle have seen enough that, um, that they understand that we really do need to get something done.
“And I think, you know, part of my role here is educating people on the particulars of what,”
what we think will work and, you know, what, what won't work. And so, um, and I would just say, I'm pretty encouraged. I have a really strong team around me that is equally motivated on this issue, some people that have spent a lot of time trying to fix this. And so I'm really, you know, thankful to have such a dedicated and strong team on the topic. And we have the benefit of being just very narrowly focused on this issue, no campaign to run, no political ambitions beyond this.
And so frankly, it's pretty liberating to have the luxury of being focused on this singular issue. And, and I'm remain hopeful that we can make a difference. Well, I'm super, we are super hopeful that you'll be a great difference here. So appreciative for your service and the experience that you're bringing to the US Senate. And I wish you the best of luck. And hopefully we'll get some great results. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you, David. Appreciate it. Senator.
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And always remember, liberty and freedom are easily taken to granted. Don't take for granted.
Go out there and defend freedom liberty. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you on the next episode.
