He said, 'Hey, I'd like for you to think about taking the Senate seat.' And I said, 'Man, between the two of us, we can come up with somebody much better.' And his response was, 'That wasn't my question.' Within 5 minutes of that swearing in, there was a vote called. I went from being sworn in to not even knowing how the process of voting worked in there. Frankly, boy, you talk about somebody that just had zero experience to prepare him for that. That was me.
He stopped, looked me in the eye and said, 'You are exactly the kind of person that we need as engineers.' That one person that took 2 minutes to drag me out of the hall and tell me that made my life, I mean, totally different. I just want people to know I did what I thought was right for our country and I did that without worrying about what was popular other than the fact that I was the shortest term senator ever in the state of Oklahoma.
So my voice in today's episode is powered by 11 Labs. Alan Armstrong spent nearly 40 years at Williams, one of America's major energy infrastructure companies, starting as an engineer and eventually serving as president and CEO. In March 2026, just one day after retiring from Williams, he was appointed to the United States Senate from Oklahoma. He is not a career politician, and because of Oklahoma law, he cannot run for the seat he now holds. That makes this a very unusual kind of public service. Senator Armstrong, welcome to the show. Before we start with anything else, what actually happened when you got the call asking you to serve in the Senate and what was the first thing you thought privately?
Well, first of all, thank you all very much for having me. I am very honored to be on the show with you all and been a big fan and love the authenticity that you all bring to these interviews. So, I was really thrilled, kind of thinking you must have had the wrong person that you reached out to, but I'm thrilled to have an opportunity to speak to you all today. Let's see. The first thing that I thought... I got a call from the governor and he wanted to know if I would come meet with him. I wasn't sure what it was about, but I was actually in Colorado at the time and so he wanted to meet with me. That was a Saturday. He wanted to meet with me at 8:00 in the morning. So I went and met with him and he said, 'Hey, I'd like for you to think about taking the Senate seat.' And I said, 'Man, I know between the two of us, we can come up with somebody much better to take this role, and I'd love to work with you on, you know, getting the right person.' And his response was, 'That wasn't my question. I asked you if you would be willing to do it or not.' And so I pondered on that and spoke to my wife about it, who definitely was not very excited about it to start with. Actually said a prayer about it and got one of those responses that you get sometimes which was, 'Why are you asking me? You know what the right thing to do is here.' So I would say it was a great opportunity to serve and I have witnessed how difficult it's become to build large infrastructure in our country and I know how problematic that'll be long term for our country if we don't get that fixed and that's really what compelled me to take it is because I don't want to be sitting back improving my golf game and complaining about things that aren't getting done when I wasn't willing to throw myself in the ring, frankly.
So, was your gut reaction, I mean, obviously find somebody else, but when he said, you know, no, we're looking at you. Was your gut reaction, no thanks, or were you... your wife was against it initially, but were you leaning towards it?
Yeah, I mean, I really honestly thought that I could convince them we could come up with somebody better. There was a lot of people very interested in it and they had been public about that. And so I, you know, I just really wanted to make sure that the governor was served well in the role, but my gut reaction was, wow, I don't really want to take this on on one hand. On the other hand, I knew it was the right thing to do. So, you know, and the governor has been such a leader and convicted to doing what he thinks is right even when it's not the best for him politically. And I have really admired that. And kind of seen it as very distinct amongst, you know, typical political leadership. And so, if it had been somebody else asking me to do it, it probably would have been a no. But I really have a tremendous amount of respect for the way he's carried himself here in his term as governor.
Then the speed of it became real immediately. You went from running a major energy company to walking into the United States Senate almost overnight. What felt strange the first time you sat in that chamber?
You know, I think the thing that was really weighty for me, and just to lay this out, I got sworn in, and they have like a ceremonial room that they do it, and they actually do it on the Senate floor, too. And they do it in the ceremonial room, so your family can join you. But then they also do the official swearing in within the actual chamber. And within 5 minutes of that swearing in, there was a vote called. And so I went from literally being sworn in to not even knowing how the process of voting worked in there, frankly. So I was, boy, you talk about somebody that just had zero experience to prepare him for that. I was that guy. But I think the thing that most impressed me was just kind of the weight of history and thinking all the things that had been settled in that room and all the important discussions that have guided our country, you know, probably have happened in that room. So that was the part that was kind of really weighty on me and everything happened so fast. I was kind of like, 'Wow, I can't believe I'm actually standing here on the Senate floor with a role, you know, like this.' So, it was definitely though, I think, the weight of understanding the history that's happened in that room and having an opportunity to be a part of that.
You are not a career politician. When did you first feel the learning curve of the job?
I would say that started right off the bat. I think when it hit me that it was going to be, you know, a completely new set of skills required than what I was used to was realizing how many things stand just because there's such a wide breadth of issues that the Senate is looking at. And I came in thinking, boy, I can really make a difference on permitting reform. That's the one thing I know I can contribute to and really help, you know, bring some practical experience to that table. But I kind of came in with a pretty narrow focus and I realized pretty quick that while that was important to a lot of people there were so many other issues and importantly things that are just pure political conflict. As I walked in, there was a big fight going on about whether or not we would pay people that actually work for a living and should get paid. And I thought how incredibly silly this is that there's been this much time wasted on deciding if we're going to pay people that obviously are going to get paid in the end. But just realizing they have this huge body of government that's supposed to be the group that's looking forward, looking around the corner, helping, you know, guide our country to be prepared for all the challenges ahead. And all we were doing, the discussion was just a political fight over trying to make the other team look bad because the DHS and particularly TSA workers weren't being paid. So that was kind of what really made me realize, boy, this is going to be different is I had a very clear objective about what I thought was most important to get done and yet there was tremendous amount of interference on things that are really, you know, are going to get handled anyway but we're consuming a ton of time. And so I think on one hand knowing it was going to require patience and I will tell you that one of the things I constantly pray for is for me to have patience because I'm not a very patient person. And so this has been a real challenge for me to kind of tolerate the inefficiency that goes on there.
That was going to be my question is you're coming from, you know, business where the private sector is be efficient or die pretty much and politics is from the outside looking in it almost feels like the opposite where they can intentionally go slow with things and political points and theatrics. I guess when you're now sitting on the other side of the fence, is it possible that government could run much more efficiently? If you took all the top whatever 200, 300 business people and had them in all the political seats, major political seats, how different would it look?
Well, I think as long as people realize that their ideas, whoever has the best ideas wins, I think if that's actually what the decisions were based on and it wasn't based on tenure and, you know, those things that set the procedure and the process today, I think it would be remarkably different. There's a lot of really well-intended people in Senate, but the process and the fact that everything's run by tenure. And so much of the effort today is to get a, you know, to get a spot on Instagram or on X, whatever it takes for somebody to get a sound bite that they can talk about how tough they are and make the other side look bad. That seems to be where a lot of the energy is spent frankly today. So I think if you pulled the cameras and you pulled the social media out of the mix and you didn't have things so driven by tenure in terms of Senate leadership, I think it would be a very different place. So I don't see how that happens frankly but to answer your question it would be a very different place.
If you had a magic wand you could change one thing about it what would it be?
I think people are, you know, so driven by social media so if you could pull social media out of it you could actually have confidential debates and discussion where best ideas win. So I would say right now I think if you could kind of pull transparency or you could pull cameras out not for the sake of destroying transparency but for the sake of eliminating people making it a place just to grandstand and to try to make the other side look bad. I think that would be probably a really big improvement.
Do you think that part of... well, the main reason behind that is trying to get reelected, trying to get the sound bites and all that. I mean, if you had term limits or if everybody was in your seat, right, where you're not... you can't run again, not only are you not, you can't. Do you think that would reduce that and make people actually try to get things done?
Yeah, I do. I do think that, you know, I always kind of wondered about term limits. And I think most people, if they were being honest with you about that, would say, 'Yeah, it's good to not have term limits, but as long as we don't have any term limits, who's going to give up a senator that's long tenured for their state that's on the right committees that, you know, punches above their weight within the Senate because of their tenure, because of their committee assignments, and therefore are positioned to help their own state do better.' But yes, I definitely think that after watching this, I think term limits would be a really good idea. And so I mean, a six-year term is pretty long by itself, frankly, and I think if you had that, it would be dramatically reduced. I don't know if you've seen the 60 Minutes interview with Ben Sasse or not, but really, you know, somebody that was in there, you know, four... I think Ben was in there four years or so, and I thought his points on this particular topic were really spot on as well.
I saw the sound bite. I should go watch the whole thing. I saw the sound bite where he's talking about basically we're not focusing on the actual problems for the future. We're just focusing on...
Yeah. Completely. Yeah. Think about... I mean, think about that. For the first five weeks, what got agreed to while I was in there was we were going to pay people that are law enforcement protecting our country. And we agreed to, you know, now we've gotten close to agreeing to extend the intelligence gathering process. So things that you would just think were a given and you wouldn't spend much time on, but they become such political footballs of trying to make the other side look bad that that's where all the time gets consumed.
Yeah. How long would that take you at Williams to decide to pay those people?
I mean, it literally wouldn't even be a decision. Like that would never come up as a question.
So that's the kind of stuff that I think deters from being able to have really strong intellectual debates in our country.
You accepted this role knowing you could not run for the seat. Does that make it easier to focus on the work in front of you? Does it impact your thoughts on term limits in government?
Yes and yes. I definitely, I mean, I see how much time people spend either campaigning or worried about what vote they're taking because of campaigning. And so I'm kind of... it's kind of an interesting point to be in this period where we're right ahead of midterms and there's a lot of, you know, senators that have election battles that they're having to take on. And so the weight of those are very evident in terms of things being able to get done. And I definitely, as I mentioned earlier, I definitely think that after watching this, I think term limits are, you know, I feel more strongly than ever that that's a really good idea. And I have the luxury. I really do, like every day I wake up and I'm really invigorated because this is a brand new challenge that I haven't, you know, experienced a totally different set of skill sets than what I've brought to the table. And so I really try to focus on taking on that obstacle as a challenge and being excited about getting to take that challenge on. And it really is kind of energizing. And I wonder if everybody was kind of in a similar situation where they weren't so worried about, you know, what impact their best ideas being brought to the table would have on their re-election, but they honestly were just as a US citizen and perhaps, you know, leaders from their own sector or industry and they were trying to make our country better. I think it'd be a different place in that regard. But I have to tell you, surprisingly it sounds like I'm, you know, super frustrated and I am on the one hand, but on the other hand, I see it as such a cool new challenge that's very different than anything I've had the opportunity to take on before.
Beyond reelection, the deeper issue is decision-making. You spent decades making decisions where the results showed up in projects, jobs, and balance sheets. What has surprised you most about how decisions get made in Washington? Is there something all politicians can learn from the private sector?
Yeah, really good question. It's been interesting to me. I always thought that the Senate was the body because it is the longest terms, the six-year terms. I always thought it would be the body that actually could think longer term, focus longer term. And a lot of what people have been focused on is things like gasoline prices that yes, in the short term, you know, those are painful, but it's not like we're at some extreme volatility. Gasoline prices aren't any higher now than they were in June and July of '22. And in fact, they're lower than that. And so, but you see such a fixation on making that a political football and not focusing on what's good for the long term. And it's one of the reasons that things like permitting reform get so bad before they get fixed is because if you fix permitting reform today, it's not going to change the price at the pump tomorrow. It's not going to change it even probably next year. It would change it two or three years down the road and lower people's utility bills, but it's going to be slow and it's going to be kind of a long-term improvement for our country. So, it's really hard for a politician that's worried about what other people think in the immediate term and immediate gratification focus that we have as Americans today. It's very hard for a politician to go and spend his time and effort on that issue because it's not going to get you reelected. And it's not even going to be all that popular because the immediate gratification for those decisions isn't going to be there. It's not a tax cut that's going to show up within the year. It is long, big, long-term important issues to our country that really the Senate ought to be the one that is leading on, you know, big long-term ideas and reforms like this. But so that's an area that as I look at it, I think I'm uniquely qualified to focus on something that's long term because I don't care about, you know, what people think. I care about what I think. I care about what happens to our country in the end, but I'm not really in it for being popular.
Yeah, we're beating a dead horse. I'm beating a dead horse here. But it's like the term limit just seems so obvious. It's painful that we're not doing it. But because that's the whole point. Like the democracy is way better than whatever what they're doing in China or Russia or a place like that. But the one advantage they have is they can make a really good 30-year decision where we just... there's no way the politicians we have that are trying to get reelected.
Yeah. And it's, you know, Troy, that's exactly kind of the point around something like permitting reform. I'll tell you a quick story. When I first came in as CEO, we were spinning off our E&P. We had an exploration and production company called WPX at the time and I had made the decision to spin that off to our shareholders and the Chinese government decided that they wanted to either buy or partner with us to buy that company. And so I went and met with them and they wanted to run the operation from China from a very top-down mentality. And they thought that we had this like, you know, the secret Kentucky Fried Chicken stuck away somewhere that they could just build into their own operations. And in reality, what we had was good old-fashioned American ingenuity that was driven by the way we paid our employees at the rig and on the rig and them learning how to do that better and better and safer and faster and that was the formula that we had as Americans. And I told them, listen, if you want to run this from here there's no way we would partner with you because you're not going to be happy and we're not going to be happy. The things that make us great and the reason we're good at this is because we give people at the ground floor the freedom and we give them the incentives to do this right and that's why we're good at it. So I walked away from that meeting being very proud of being an American, thinking, you know, our capitalism and the way we don't drive things all the way from the top is what makes us so hard to compete with on the one hand. So I really walked away from that thinking, 'Wow, we're really good.' But as you roll the clock forward and you realize how much faster the Chinese can build a nuclear plant, you realize how much faster Dubai can build a nuclear plant. I went to Dubai one time and they drove me by this 100 square mile solar farm and I asked the guy, 'So, wow, how long did it take to permit this because it just took up this enormous area?' And the guy looked at me and said, 'Permit?' like literally didn't know what that even meant. And so I think about that and our competitiveness and we cannot afford to be held up on things that don't have anything to do with protecting the environment. There's not a big company out there today that thinks about trying to actually, you know, not comply with the most stringent environmental regulations. But that is not the problem. That is not even close to being the problem. The problem is when it comes to permitting reform is we've just made piles and piles of processes and red tape that allow people to sue and stop projects on a regular basis and basically extort companies that are halfway over a fence building a project and have to pay off the extortion to be able to, you know, through the courts and through lawsuits and to settle to be able to move projects forward. And that cost of those projects and projects being stopped drives people's utility bills higher and higher and higher. People always think that I think the environmental opposition always thinks they're stopping the big bad pipeline company and that, you know, they're doing such a great thing for doing that. Honestly, the impact of that falls to the consumer and I don't think American people, you know, have the patience for understanding that and I certainly don't think politicians have the patience for understanding that.
That brings us back to the original question. When Governor Stitt asked you to serve, what made you feel this was the right thing to do?
Yeah, I would say that was pretty simple in terms of thinking it was the right thing to do because the governor, you know, Governor Stitt actually heads up the National Governor's Association and one of his top priorities and the National Governor's Association has been to take on permitting reform because they're seeing the way it restricts their states from being able to grow. And so to the degree that that's really one of the things that he wanted to see tackled, I definitely thought that I had a lot to offer on that front and really felt it had been super selfish of me frankly to, you know, to not step in the ring and take the role on. So, it certainly wasn't something that was on my list of things I ever even dreamed of doing, frankly. Not even in my, you know, craziest moments did I think of doing it. But when asked to do it and knowing that how passionate I was about trying to make a difference on permitting reform, it would have been... I'd have had a hard time living with myself if I wasn't willing to at least give it a try.
Let's go back to your time in the private sector. You started at Williams as an engineer. What did engineering teach you about solving problems that you still carry with you?
Well, great question. I'll tell you, I love solving problems. I always have, like the more difficult it is and the more kind of complex the challenge is, the more I tend to gravitate towards it. But I do think in engineering, I think you're taught a method to break big problems down into smaller problems that you can put resources on or people on to tackle. And so I think, you know, the problem-solving mode was really pretty natural to me. What wasn't natural and I had to really, you know, rely on some really good mentors on was I never have been and, you know, still not very patient. So, I'm often not very good at slowing down and bringing people along. And that's one of the things I really had to learn over the years was, you know, as I've told several people, like you can be right all you want to be, but if you can't bring in a big organization, if you can't bring people along to actually go and execute on that opportunity, it doesn't really make any difference for the company and the shareholders benefit. It doesn't really make any difference if you're right or wrong if you can't actually bring people along to help solve that problem. And so I had a really great mentor, a guy named Steve Springer, who was really good at people management and people skills. And, you know, I think if it hadn't been for him, I don't think I would be here today, frankly, in the roles I've been in because he kind of without telling me what to do, he kind of put a mirror up to me and let me know that I could just sit there and continue to beat my head against the wall and talk about how smart I was and how right I was, but at the end of the day, you had to get people to come along. And so that was one of the mentors in my career that was really, really helpful at getting me to not be so stubborn about getting things done. And one of the things that I always tell to new leaders coming in, I said, you know, if it's a six one way, half a dozen the other in terms of what the solutions are and you can adopt somebody else's solution, if you're the six guy and they're the half a dozen first solution, if you can adopt their solution, you just found somebody else to help support you on getting it done, on solving the problem. And so like just being right and insisting that it be done your way is often not the best way to get it done and not worrying about who gets the credit, but really being focused on seeing a solution emerge. And so those are some of the really important learnings that I had coming from a very technical, very it's right or wrong. There's a perfect solution and a not so perfect solution. And so coming from that black and white kind of world to one where you realize that you really just need to move people ahead and boy, you can bring a lot of energy from people if they believe it's their idea and they're going to be more passionate than ever. So that was a big learning for me probably halfway through my career.
Was that like an aha moment with Steve showing you that or telling you that or was it more over time you learned it?
Yeah, it was more over time. It's like, you know, it's like some of those things you're... for me anyway, my granddad would say to me and 10 years later I'd go, 'Wow, that was really wise.' You know, little as I was listening to that, it was a really wise statement.
Values seem to matter as much as problem solving. You stayed at one company for almost 40 years. What kept you there that long?
You know, it was a company that really had the values that I really aspired to. It never asked me to cut corners. It never asked me to do something with compromised values. And it genuinely tried to do things right. It was a very apolitical company. So, you know, it was almost meritocracy. There was a guy named John Williams who was kind of the long-standing Williams CEO. He was the original... his uncles actually started the company, but he wound up being the CEO for 36 years and is the one that really grew it into a public company. And he was a very courageous man. He actually was head of the construction battalion, the CBs, that landed at Iwo Jima, and he lost half of the people in his command as they were landing because the Japanese waited until they started bringing their big equipment in to bring out their artillery. And so he had lived through some things that, you know, none of us or very few of us in today's age have had to live through. But he was just super courageous. He like if there was something... if he needed to tell you that your breath stunk he would tell you your breath stunk right then and there. He wasn't... it wasn't any holding back. He was very frank, but you also knew he was really looking out for the best of the organization. And that culture of putting the organization first ahead of yourself as an individual really resonated with me. And I always saw it, you know, at the company being a very kind of apolitical place and one that as long as you were doing what you thought was right for the company, you could fight with a lot of vengeance on trying to get something done and not get fired as long as it truly was what was best for the company and not what was best for you as an individual. So that culture really resonated with me and I actually midway through my career a company called Enron which was, you know, kind of the bad and evil in the energy space back in the kind of '90s and right into 2001. We sold the company and I was going to go to work for them and I went and interviewed with the man at the time that was their president who ultimately went to jail and I sat there and compared the way he was speaking. He was, you know, he was cussing. He was saying things like, 'Well, man, if you don't know the difference between a great company like Enron versus a company like Williams, maybe you're not so smart after all.' And very derogatory towards a lot of other people. And so I kind of had that comparison of that leadership versus at the time Joe Williams and a guy named Keith Bailey who was the first non-Williams CEO and what kind of stellar character they were. And even though the offer to go to Enron was a lot more money, I just, you know, I really felt like I was much better aligned with the Williams values and so it honestly wasn't that hard a decision. You know, I mean, I was at that stage where you got... I think we, Shel and I had two kids at the time and you're, you know, struggling to pay for diapers, but even with that, it was pretty clear to me that I wanted to stay with the company that I felt good about their values.
When you became CEO, what was the first problem that made you realize the job was heavier than you expected?
You know, I think always for me, I think big important personnel decisions are always the hardest because at a very senior level in a company, you really have to be focused on what's best for the organization and you really can't let personal relationships stand in the way of that. You really have to think about what's best for the company. And that's difficult. But definitely the hardest thing that I ever faced was we back in June 13th of 2013 we had two employees die at one of our facilities in Geismar, Louisiana. And feeling the weight of talking to those families and thinking really hard about what you could have done different in your seat to have not... it was a perfectly preventable accident. It wasn't like some strange act of God or anything like that. It was just a very strange accident. And I'm sorry, it wasn't... it was a perfectly preventable accident, you know, upon review. And we thought it was our safest facility in all of our operations at Williams. It was kind of a flagship for us. And come to find out they had done a really good job of getting good safety scores, but really had kind of lost the culture of really being focused on the really important things around training and things like that. So that was definitely the moment where I really felt the weight of that and wondered if I really was the right person to be leading the organization if I wasn't paying close enough attention to know that we had an emerging problem like that at one of our facilities. And so that was definitely the weightiest thing that happened in my tenure. There was a lot of, you know, we had two activists come on the board and try to come in and sell the company and that resulted in a vote that was whether we're going to sell the company or not. Very difficult times to have short-term activists on a board on a company that thinks very long term and thinks about values very long term. That was really hard. But I don't think anything, you know, from my perspective anyway, those were... I wouldn't say they were fun challenges but they were challenges I learned from and could really bring my conviction to our company and our values to the table but the death of the two employees was definitely the hardest thing I ever faced.
You led a company where decisions affected workers, families, communities, and energy prices. Was there a decision that stayed with you the most?
Well, I definitely think, you know, bringing in... like in this case after that event I brought in a COO. I, you know, I'd come up through the operating ranks and so I always kind of had an affinity for being close to the operations, but post that event at our Geismar facility in Louisiana, I really thought long and hard that I really needed to have somebody come in that could pay more attention to our safety culture and making sure that we were protecting our employees and put some more focus and attention on that. So, a gentleman named Michael Dunn who became our chief operating officer and somebody I'd actually started with at Williams early on and then he had left and wound up at Berkshire Hathaway working for their energy group and I was able to recruit him back to be our COO and he made such a remarkable difference. And so, one of the things that I really learned in that process is going and getting your own team of people that you are really excited about and you're excited about seeing them be successful and you're really invested in them being successful and you truly get excited when things are good are happening for them and the team. That was kind of midway through my tenure as CEO. And I would just say, you know, I always tell new incoming CEOs, whatever you do, put a team around you that you're super excited about and do that as quickly as you can. And don't wait around to make even though those are tough decisions, you know, because there are going to be a lot of existing leaders that are impacted by it. But you really do have to get a team around you that you're confident are the very best and you're confident are going to put the organization first ahead of their own personal interest. And that for me that went from making my job pretty difficult frankly to one where it was a lot of fun being a team leader and me focusing on the health of the team. Not making all those individual decisions, but me really being focused on making sure that team was healthy. And that they were operating in what we had as a team. We had a list of expected behaviors that we expected out of the team. And it was my job to make sure I was holding everybody accountable for acting in that way. And I know that sounds like, you know, right out of a leadership or management book, but if you really do that in practice, if you honestly hold people accountable to being frank and honest with each other and supportive where they can and making sure that people aren't, you know, building alliances or taking conversations outside of the team. And you can really do that. It's amazing what a group, what a team of executives can accomplish if you operate that way.
You have talked a lot about permitting reform. When did you first see a real project get stuck and think this system needs to work better?
Yeah, you know, my realization on the permitting reform was kind of a building issue. In other words, it just kept getting worse and worse. And if you think about if you're a project manager and your job is to go get this project done and a regulator asks you to do something else and even though it's not required by law or by regulation, but to get the permit, you're going to say yes to it. And then the next project that comes along, they're going to require something else. And before long, you've got so many tentacles on these projects and so many different agencies telling you to do different things that I would just say it was a slow building process. But the amount of money and time that gets wasted these days on these projects is pretty enormous. Probably the worst ever though was in the state of New York with a pipeline called Constitution that's still not built today. Needs to desperately get built because it connects the lowest cost gas in the US and maybe lowest cost gas in the world in the Pennsylvania area with places like Boston and New England that have some of the highest price natural gas anywhere in the world in the wintertime. And it's only 120 miles, but it has to go across the state of New York. And for, you know, for campaign funding...
For reasons, the state of New York has been unwilling to grant the permits for that project. Even though it would lower people's cost and it was not going to do any environmental damage in the route that was selected, they've stopped it now three times. Watching that and realizing that it really wasn't about protecting the environment, there weren't really any legitimate issues the way we construct the pipeline today. We really work hard, and I'm very proud of speaking for Williams, that Williams very much focuses on making sure that things are left better than when we started. And in fact, that came from Joe Williams, not John Williams, but Joe Williams, who was actually head of the Nature Conservancy for a long time. He would always ask you when you were a project manager, 'What are we doing on this project to make the area better than when we found it?' And so that kind of culturally was the way we take on projects. But even then, the focus on killing projects continues on by a lot of the NGOs like Sierra Club and folks like that that honestly make money off of the fight. That's actually their business model. They're not actually out there to actually, from my perspective, improve anything about the siting of the project. They make money by stirring a fight up and having people donate and that's kind of how they operate.
So why would I guess what's the incentive? Obviously it gets cheaper gas for Boston and those places, but why should New Yorkers, I mean I guess like what could New Yorkers do to help in that fight, right? Is it just something that you could use, is it call your politicians and it doesn't really do anything or?
Yeah, it's kind of interesting because if you ever get a chance right there on the Pennsylvania to New York line, right there like north of Scranton, Pennsylvania. In Pennsylvania, the landowners are allowed to produce gas from their lands there. And you go there and you will see the nicest tractors, the nicest horses. People's kids are at home with jobs there in that industry that otherwise wouldn't be. And you go right across the state line into Broome, New York, and you see some terrible poverty on the other side of the state line because the state has restricted their ability. And the resource obviously goes across the state line, but the state of New York has prevented themselves from doing that. Mostly because most of the voting population is in New York City and downstate and the people upstate who would benefit from it are kind of left having their politics driven by people that don't actually live there. And so I think New York is starting to realize that the reason their utility bills are so high is because they've cut themselves off from fuels like this. And I think that the politics of that are going to wind up, they've been able to blame it on all kinds of other things like not having offshore wind projects develop, but that is not a lower-cost resource. So they've been able to blame it on things like that. But I think the New Yorkers that are seeing their utility bills continuing to escalate are going to start asking those tough questions of their politicians. And I think ultimately that's what it's going to take to change that.
You came straight from the energy industry into the Senate. What has been hardest to see differently from this new seat?
Well, there's all kinds of strange things that I never knew existed. One of them is, and I'd be surprised that very many people outside of politics appreciate this, but believe it or not, even within the Senate and within their own party, there are turf battles between committee jurisdiction. And so for instance, when it comes to permitting, you have the EPW committee, that is the Environment and Public Works committee, and then you have the Energy and Natural Resources committee. And a lot of these issues that need to be solved from a permitting reform standpoint overlap between those committees. And it never dawned on me from the outside that if you propose a bill that requires it to kind of cross over the lines that you wind up with a battle over committee jurisdiction between the staffers typically. And I just never had any idea that something like that existed but it's very real and when I kind of act surprised by it I expose to a lot of people how naive I am. But that was shocking to me. Being part of the first voterama, which is getting a hundred people who should be in bed are up until 4 in the morning doing a vote on votes that everybody knows exactly how they're going to turn out. But they go through the process so that the minority party can shame the majority party into not voting for motherhood and apple pie. And so set another way, there's a bill that has to be passed and the minority party, in this case the Democrats, load on all these amendments to try to be able to grandstand that see this opponent of mine didn't vote for motherhood and apple pie and you can't do that. You can't vote for it because once you've opened it, then everything else is going to come falling out of the kitchen sink and you actually won't get that one thing that has to be done with a simple majority. You won't be able to get it done. So, but it's just a shaming process, frankly. It's an opportunity to get video clips of somebody grandstanding on the floor and then the opposing party not voting for it. So that kind of stuff has been, I never realized how that actually worked, and that's been kind of shocking to see how much time is wasted on stuff like that that is purely around campaigning. It's not making our country better.
