The Honorable Alan Armstrong at The Energy Future Forum 2026

Hardly. It's good to have you back.

It's very strange to me. There's a lot of my friends that would take real issue with the term honorable in front of my name there. So, we're going with it. We all think so.

Thank you.

Yes. Correct.

Yeah. You know, it is pretty liberating and it hits on you when you're in this situation when you're in midterms and you realize how much energy and attention is paid to people's campaigns, to what they say and how that's going to affect their election. So, it's pretty, you know, that has been impressed on me kind of watching that. But it's super, you know, liberating being in my shoes where I'm one, I'm not having to spend the time and energy on that and two, you know, I'm not worried about, you know, what somebody's going to accuse me of in the process of trying to get something done. So, it's pretty liberating, actually.

Yeah, you know, this would it first of all, this went pretty fast in terms of a call from the governor asking for me to meet with him and then asking me if I would be willing to, which was a couple of weeks before he called me a day before and said, 'Hey, I've decided it's you and you need to meet with Trump and then we'll swear you in on Tuesday.' And that was a Saturday. So, that all went pretty fast after, you know, a period of it being quiet. But during that time and in terms of considering it, I really made some calls around to people to say, 'Do you actually think we could get some meaningful permitting reform done?' Because if not, I don't really think I'm the right person to take the job. Plenty of other people really good to take the job. The governor, you know, I will say to his credit, has been really making permitting reform an important priority for the National Governor's Association that he leads. And so, it's nice to see the governor's understanding how important permitting reform is. But truly that was what compelled me was believing that there is a good chance that we could actually get some permitting reform done. And my role is not to, you know, I'm not interested in just saying we got permitting reform done. I'm only interested in making sure that it's actually meaningful and pragmatic and actually solves some problems because we've seen a lot of bills come out, a lot of attempts come out that really don't address that. And it's not because people aren't well intended. It's just that you have a plethora of, you know, that's one of the things that's really impressed me as well is how much the staffs run things around there. And you know, with all due respect, they haven't been out there getting their heads beat in and their noses bloodied in trying to get things permitted. So, they're extremely well intended and very smart, you know, and very bright people to work with, but being able to lay out here's the problem with that. Here's why we need to do it this way is great. The staff that we've been able to attract to this is fantastic. Lane Wilson, who is my chief of staff, is on a 90-day leave from his role as general counsel at Williams and he also was a federal judge before that. So he has seen these things from both the bench as well as at the company level. And he's attracted because there's a lot of people that have been beating their head against this around DC. A lot of young energetic folks that have joined the staff as well. So, it is a kind of a one-track effort and I'm trying to make sure that we don't let a lot of the other issues that are to be dealt with distract us from being able to actually keep the pressure on getting something done on this.