Executive Chairman of the Board, Williams Companies Inc
Sen. Armstrong: 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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Interviewer0:00
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 Alan 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 caught everybody off guard a little bit. Clearly, the president's trying to make a strong statement about how important the Save Act, the Save America Act, is to him personally, and I think he certainly got his point across on that.
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Interviewer0:50
There was this meeting that followed with the president, and I would love your readout on 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
He just continues to express the importance of getting our voting to something that everybody can trust and be dependent on. I think that's obviously very important to him, but I'm not gonna make any comments on what exactly went on in the room. Obviously that's very important to the president. He continues to press on that. But it's a private conversation for good reason, and I think we should have more private conversations and work out differences rather than letting them work their way out into the public.
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Interviewer1:52
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. One of the things that voters say over and over again when asked is they're focused on these kitchen table issues, and housing has gotten so expensive in this country. Are you disappointed that the bill didn't get passed?
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Alan Armstrong2:15
I think there's a lot of important work that we need to be doing. Permitting reform is something I think is actually more important than any of those issues 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 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. Yes, there's a lot of important things that need to get done, and this is a place where people express what they think is most important to them. That's what the president was doing.
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Interviewer3:00
Tell us a bit what you've heard from your constituents from Oklahomans about housing in particular. Affordability is such a big issue going into the midterms. What are you hearing from your constituents about the need for progress on permitting reform and affordable housing more broadly?
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Alan Armstrong3:16
That's not a front and center issue in Oklahoma. We have a very low cost of living, 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 costs are things we can do without spending money or making tax breaks. One of the things most interesting to me about the housing bill is that some of its key elements involve NEPA waivers. So waiving the NEPA laws is all about our permitting reform. You saw the same thing in the CHIPS Act. 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. That was a stark issue for me on the housing bill. Even getting affordable housing is being impacted by how litigated our permitting processes have become here in the US.
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Interviewer4:33
I know another big cost is energy, and you are trying to address that in a new bill you're proposing. You wanna run us through that? 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
I've watched this for 40 years in my career on the private side, and I've seen it get worse and worse. For a company like Williams Companies where I was the CEO, we have a lot of big incumbent pipelines, the nation's largest pipeline. When you're the incumbent and it's hard to build new stuff, it's not a very bad business environment. But looking at it long term, realizing you're just raising the price to consumers more and more, ultimately that's not a good thing for our country or for consumers. It's one of the reasons I took this role. In fact, it's the primary reason I took this role: to try to raise concern over how much our processes are costing the American people. People 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, the pipeline companies and power transmission companies would be competing and having to lower their prices to deliver that product. But as it is, we've got bottlenecked and constrained infrastructure, and that's actually raising the price to consumers.
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Interviewer6:26
I wanna ask you about the talks underway between the US and Iran. Let me get into them by asking about what the president said a couple of times this week: he's been critical of gasoline companies for prices not coming down as fast as oil prices. What would you say to somebody who doesn't know how this works, why we're not seeing the kind of decrease in gas prices as quickly as the president wants?
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Alan Armstrong6:51
There always is a long lag. It's the way the market works. If the price of oil goes down in one day, the person who bought that oil to run it through the refinery, then put it in a tank, then take it through pipelines, then to a storage facility, and finally when you squeeze the handle at the pump, that's a long transit time. So the price doesn't immediately get lowered at the place you're delivering the pumping. In the retail gasoline business, it's called the shelf. Prices stay up a little bit longer. It's a profitable time for the retail gas station. But guess what? On the way up, they have to bear the other side of that coin. This is nothing new or unusual to see retail gasoline and diesel prices lag the price of oil. It would be very unusual if that happened, frankly.
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Interviewer8:02
Shouldn't the president know that or have someone who can explain it to him? Do you wanna go over to the White House and let him know that this is how it goes?
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Alan Armstrong8:11
The president has great advisers like Chris Wright in the cabinet who certainly understand that. He's been working hard to get the Strait of Hormuz open, and he's wanting to see that immediate gratification of that showing up. It's the same thing with permitting issues. There's no immediate gratification around fixing permitting reform. You have to fix it, then let the infrastructure get built over time to see the benefit. But he's been fighting hard to get the Strait open. He's thrilled to see oil prices coming down, and now he's wanting to see it show up at the pump.
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Interviewer8:56
Speaking of permitting, you were talking about infrastructure and getting more energy facilities online. The administration has done a lot to remove regulatory hurdles for new nuclear startups. There's been controversy about some of these deregulations and feasibility. None of these startups are anywhere close to production and won't be for years. Is that where the country should be focusing on new forms of energy, or are there quicker, simpler ways to get the grid up and running faster?
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Alan Armstrong9:40
We need to be focused on any and all kinds of energy. We should never stop bringing innovation forward for long-term energy sources. Things like fusion—not what small modular reactors are—but long term, as a country, we have the ability to invest in research and development. The old model of large reactors is a very expensive, risky process. You can ask Southern Companies about their big project at Vogtle, the last big nuclear facility brought online. It's a very difficult regulatory process. The effort that's worthy of US attention and investment is how to take energy from nuclear and make it simpler to extract that heat and make it commercial. The old way is big, complex, super expensive. The industry got set back hard after some incidents and was back on its heels, and nobody was willing to invest in innovation because it had such a bad name. Yes, we should be investing in innovation there and continue to pursue anything. Energy is vital to any economy, and we would be foolish not to invest in research to bring that energy to us at a much lower cost in the future.
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Interviewer11:31
You're about to embark on a recess until July 13. You're filling a term vacated by Mark Wayne Mullin, now Secretary of Homeland Security. I'd characterize you as a single-issue senator in your short tenure, focused on permitting reform. What has surprised you about how difficult it is to make progress on the issues you care about?
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Alan Armstrong12:02
I hope what I'm experiencing is an anomaly associated with being right ahead of the midterms. There seems to be a lot of effort to make sure the current administration and the Republican party are not successful in getting productive things done. That's unfortunate. What surprised me the most is how low on the list it is from a party's perspective, particularly Democratic Party leadership, how much their focus is on making sure nothing productive gets done. I don't come at that as you might think as an Oklahoma Republican. I am actually very moderate, and I always think we should put our country first well ahead of our parties. It's been shocking to see how low on the list what's best for our country is in the considerations of those debates.