Executive Chairman of the Board, Williams Companies Inc
Sen. Armstrong Says Permitting Is Key to Lower Energy Costs
Senator Alan Armstrong (R-Oklahoma) joins David Gura and Christina Ruffini on Bloomberg This Weekend and says permitting reform—not additional federal spending—is the most effective way to lower housing and energy costs, arguing regulatory delays have created infrastructure bottlenecks that drive up prices for consumers.
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About Alan Armstrong
Senator Alan Armstrong (R-OK) has made permitting reform for energy and mineral infrastructure the central focus of his tenure since being appointed to the Senate in March 2026. He introduced the American Energy and Mineral Infrastructure Act alongside Senators Rick Scott, Cynthia Lummis, Katie Britt, and James Lankford. In his inaugural Senate floor speech on July 16, 2026, Armstrong argued that the U.S. has abundant energy resources but lacks the infrastructure to deliver them, and he attributed this to a permitting process that he said creates litigation risk and uncertainty for investors. He cited his experience as CEO of Williams Companies, describing a project where a federal court vacated a pipeline certificate after the project was already operating, and another instance where a 120-mile pipeline was blocked by a state using Section 401 of the Clean Water Act. Armstrong has stated that the problem is not a lack of environmental protections but rather the process and litigation risk, and he has said his bill does not aim to diminish environmental standards. He has described the current system as "strangling" the country and called for Congress to show "political courage" to fix it. Armstrong has said he has no political ambition beyond his current seat and that his short, non-reelection term gives him freedom to focus on this issue. He has also expressed surprise at what he described as a focus by Democratic Party leadership on preventing productive outcomes, and he has said he considers himself "very moderate" and believes in putting country ahead of party.
Transcript (18 segments)
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Narrator0:00
Senate reversed course on limiting President Trump's power in the Iran war in an effort to placate the president after an extremely tense lunch on Capitol Hill. Trump walked into the building and has already sparked frustration on his part and had a tense meeting, a tense luncheon there on Capitol Hill, post on social media he refused to sign a housing bill that was passed by a near unanimous vote until his voting act also passes Congress. Senator Allen Armstrong of Oklahoma was at that Senate Republican lunch with the president. We asked him about the housing bill as well as the president's interactions with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
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Alan Armstrong0:31
I think that was obviously a surprise to everybody and I think caught everybody off guard there a little bit. I think, you know, clearly the president's trying to make a strong statement about how important the SAVE Act is to him personally, and I think he certainly got his point across on that.
H
Host0:50
There was this meeting that followed with the president, and I would love your readout on somewhat what transpired there. We've heard that Senator Cassidy was the subject of a great deal of anger from the president. What was the mood in that room? What did you hear from the president about what he wants to have happen here for that bill to get signed into law?
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Alan Armstrong1:06
Yeah, you know, I think he just continues to express the importance of getting our voting here something that everybody can trust and be dependent on. And I think that's obviously very important to him, but, you know, I'm not gonna make any comments on what exactly went on in the room, but obviously that's very important to the president. He continues to press on that. But, you know, it's a private conversation for good reason, and I think we should have more, frankly. I think there ought to be more of those private conversations and working out differences rather than letting them work their way out into the public.
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Host1:52
You said the president got his point across that this voting act is really important to him, but this housing act was really important to Republicans, especially Republicans who are trying to run in tight races come the fall, because one of the things that voters say over and over again when asked they're focused on is these kitchen table issues, and housing has gotten so expensive in this country. Are you disappointed that the bill didn't get passed?
A
Alan Armstrong2:15
Yeah, you know, I think there's a lot of important work that we need to be doing. Permitting reform is obviously something I think is actually more important than any of those issues that we've been talking about, because it's something that's really holding our nation back. It's a huge tax against our economy, and it really is very crucial to our future to be able to get back to building things here with certainty, with lower costs, and being able to put capital to work in our country to power our future. And so I would just say, yes, there's a lot of important things that need to get done, and this is a place where people obviously express what they think is most important to them. And certainly that's what the president was doing.
C
Christine3:00
Tell us a bit what you've heard from your constituents, from Oklahomans, about housing in particular. So Christine, you bring up the fact that affordability is such a big issue here going into the midterms. What are you hearing from your constituents about the need for progress on permitting reform, but just on affordable housing more broadly?
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Alan Armstrong3:16
Yeah, you know, I would say that's not a front and center issue in Oklahoma. We have a very low cost of living in Oklahoma, and our governor has done a great job of making Oklahoma a place of low cost of living. Things like blocking infrastructure and raising people's utility cost are actually things that we can do without spending money, without making tax breaks. One of the things I think is most interesting to me about the housing bill is that in the housing bill, some of the key elements of it, we're doing NEPA waivers. So in other words, waiving the NEPA laws that is all about our permitting reform. You saw that same thing in the CHIPS Act. So rather than actually fixing the problem and dealing with permitting reform, we keep putting on gloves to fix a leaky pipe as it relates to our permitting process. And to me, that was a really stark issue for me on the housing bill. But even getting affordable housing is being impacted by how litigated all of our permitting processes have become here in the US.
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Host4:33
Well, I know another big cost is energy, and you are trying to address that and some of these issues in a new bill you're proposing. You wanna run us through that? I mean, I know you have a lot of experience in the private sector when it comes to energy. What are you trying to get Washington to do from somebody who's been out there in the trenches where bottom lines and profits do actually matter?
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Alan Armstrong4:52
Yeah, you know, I've watched this for forty years in my career on the private side, and I've just seen it get worse and worse and worse. Now listen, for a company like the Williams Companies where I was the CEO, that has a lot of the big incumbent pipelines, has the nation's largest pipeline, when you're the incumbent and it's hard to build new stuff, it's actually not a very bad business environment. But I think looking at it long term, realizing that you're just raising the price to consumers more and more, ultimately, that's not a good thing for our country, certainly not a good thing for the consumers. And so it's one of the reasons that I actually took this role. In fact, it's the primary reason I took this role, was to try to do my best to kinda raise concern over how much our processes are costing the American people. People will get upset about their utility prices, and everybody wants to blame it on something other than the fact that our political processes today stand in the way of us being able to build infrastructure and connect abundant resources that we are very blessed with here in the US to the consumer. If we had too much infrastructure, it would be the infrastructure companies, the pipeline companies, the power transmission companies, they would be competing and having to lower their prices to be able to deliver that product. But as it is, we've got bottlenecked and constrained infrastructure, and that's actually what's raising the price to consumers.
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Host6:26
I definitely wanna ask you about the talks that are underway between the US and Iran. But let me get into them by asking about what the president said a couple of times over the course of the week. That is, he's been very critical of gasoline companies for those prices not coming down as fast as we've seen oil prices come down. And I wonder what you would say to him, what you would say to somebody who maybe doesn't know how this works, why we're not seeing the kind of diminution in gas prices as quickly as certainly the president wants. There's a long lag time here.
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Alan Armstrong6:51
Yeah, and there always is. It's the way the market works. It's not like if the price of oil goes down in one day that the person that bought that gasoline, the person that bought the oil to run it through the refinery to then put it in a tank, to then take it through their pipelines, to then go to a storage facility there in the local area and then finally wind up when you squeeze on the handle at the pump. That's a long, long transit time. And so it's not like that the price of that product just immediately gets lowered at the place that you're delivering the pumping. In the retail gasoline business, it's called the shelf, and so you have prices stay up for a little bit longer. It's a profitable time for the retail gasoline. But guess what? On the way up, in the other direction, they have to bear the other side of that coin. So, I mean, you can track this. This is nothing new and nothing unusual to see retail gasoline and diesel prices lag the price of oil. In fact, it would be very unusual if that happened, frankly.
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Host8:02
But shouldn't the president know that, or at least have someone who can explain it to him? Do you wanna go over to the White House and maybe let him know that this is how this goes?
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Alan Armstrong8:11
Yeah, I think, you know, I think the president's got great advisers like Chris Wright in his cabinet that certainly understand that. And I think he's been working hard to get the Strait of Hormuz open, and he's just wanting to see that immediate gratification of that showing up. But it's the same thing, honestly, it's the same thing with the permitting issues. There's not immediate gratification around fixing permitting reform. You have to fix it, and then you have to let the infrastructure get built over time to see the benefit of it. But I just do think it is something that he's been fighting hard to get the Strait of Hormuz open. He's thrilled to see oil prices coming down as hard as they are, and now he's wanting to see it show up at the pump.
C
Christine8:56
Speaking of permitting, you were talking about infrastructure and getting more energy and more of these facilities online. The administration has done a lot to take away some of the regulatory hurdles for these new nuclear startups being worked out. I don't know, nuclear and startup don't really seem to go together in my mind, so I don't think I can get the sentence out. But I know that there has been some controversy about some of these deregulations, but also feasibility and whether or not this is really the best place to invest this. Because so far, none of these startups are anywhere close to production and won't be for quite a few years. Is that where the administration, where the country should be focusing when it comes to new forms of energy, or are there quicker, simpler ways to get that grid up and running faster?
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Alan Armstrong9:40
Well, I think we need to be focused on any and all kinds of energy, and I think we should never stop trying to bring innovation forward to be able to have long-term sources of energy. So things like fusion, which is not what the small modular reactors are, but long-term, you know, we as a country have the ability to invest in research and develop. And frankly, the old model that we have of the large reactors has been a very expensive, very risky process. You can certainly ask the Southern Company with their big project in Vogtle, which was the last big nuclear facility brought online. And it's a very difficult regulatory process. I think the effort that's going on that I think is really worthy of the US paying attention to and trying to invest in is how do we take the energy from nuclear and make it simpler to actually be able to extract that energy, extract that heat, and make it commercial. The old way we've done things is big, complex, super expensive, and we certainly should. And I think the industry really got set back hard after some incidents and really was kinda back on its heels, and nobody really was willing to invest in innovation looking forward because it had such a bad name, and it kinda really crippled the ability to invest in innovation. So, yes, I think we should be investing in innovation there, and I think we ought to continue to pursue anything. Energy is such a vital part of any economy, and we would be foolish, I think, not to be investing in research to be able to bring that energy to us at a much lower cost in the future.
C
Christine11:31
Just a last question here. You're about to embark on a recess that I think goes until July 13. You, of course, are not gonna be in the Senate for a very long period of time. You're filling a term that was vacated by Markwayne Mullin. He's now the Secretary of Homeland Security. I'm gonna characterize you as kind of a single-issue senator in the short tenure that you have there. You're really focused on this issue of permitting reform. I'm curious, these few months into your tenure, that's not gonna be a very long tenure, what surprised you about the place in terms of how difficult it is to make progress, how hard it is to get advancements on the issue or the issues that you care about?
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Alan Armstrong12:02
Yeah, well, I hope that what I'm experiencing is an anomaly that's associated with being right ahead of the midterms, because there certainly seems to be a lot of effort just to make sure that the current administration and the Republican Party in general is not successful in getting productive things done. That's unfortunate. But that's certainly, you know, one of the things that surprised me the most, is kinda how low on the list it is from a party's perspective and particularly Democratic Party leadership in particular in this case, how much their focus is on just making sure nothing productive gets done. And I really don't come at that like you probably think I would as an Oklahoma Republican. I am actually very moderate, and I've, you know, always think we should always put our country first well ahead of our parties. But it's been kinda shocking to me to see how low on the list what's best for our country is in the list of considerations in those debates.