Senator Alan Armstrong recently resigned as the executive chairman of Williams Companies to replace Markwayne Mullin in the Senate. Armstrong joined David Gura and Christina Ruffini on Bloomberg This Weekend to discuss the need for US infrastructure to meet the growing energy demand of AI data centers.
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What Alan Armstrong said
Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.
Senator Alan Armstrong, former executive chairman of Williams Companies, said his top priority in his short Senate tenure is permitting reform to enable critical infrastructure construction, which he argues is essential for US competitiveness, AI leadership, and lower consumer energy costs. He attributed the current permitting difficulties to politicization, agency uncertainty, and litigation by NGOs, and said the Senate should focus on long-term infrastructure. On gasoline prices, he cited June 2022's $5.03 average versus about $4.31 in early June 2026, called short-term fixes like removing the federal gas tax unhealthy, and highlighted the Western Gateway pipeline by Phillips 66 and Kinder Morgan as a needed project. He supports all energy options but opposes subsidies, and said permitting should not pick winners among energy sources. On screwworm, he said it should be taken seriously and praised Oklahoma Representative Frank Lucas's expertise.
Key takeaways
Armstrong prioritizes permitting reform to enable critical infrastructure, calling it essential for US competitiveness and AI leadership.
He cited June 2022 average US gasoline at $5.03 versus about $4.31 in early June 2026, attributing short-term spikes to geopolitical issues.
He highlighted the Western Gateway pipeline by Phillips 66 and Kinder Morgan as a needed project to bring product from Oklahoma to California.
0:00First question is, what do you plan to prioritize in your short tenure that you've got there?
2:06Again, with just a couple of months left in your tenure here, are you optimistic you're gonna be able to convince your colleagues there in the Senate, many of whom were there for longer than you, to make headway on that?
Just over two months ago, Mark Wayne Mullin left the US Senate to become the ninth Secretary of Homeland Security. Oklahoma's governor appointed Allen Armstrong to fill the seat Mullin vacated in the US Senate. Armstrong resigned as the executive chairman of Williams Companies. For many years, he was that energy company's CEO. He spent his career in the oil and gas industry. Armstrong will be one of the two senators from Oklahoma until January. State law says he cannot run for a full term, but we have him here today. Senator Allen Armstrong, thank you for joining us. First question is, what do you plan to prioritize in your short tenure that you've got there?
Yeah. Good morning. You know, this is really simple for me. I've watched as our country has gotten to be at the hardest place I can imagine to be able to build critical infrastructure in our country, and I see it really holding back our country. And so as I've witnessed that from the private side, it's really concerning to me about our future as a country when we have gotten to be the place that just cannot get out of our own way in terms of being able to build critical infrastructure. And, you know, everybody thinks that that is just something that's rough on the big bad companies, the pipeline companies, utility companies. Really, at the end of the day, the loser in that situation is the consumer and our industries in the US because that really just separates the lack of infrastructure separates abundant supplies that we have here in the US from the consumer and drives the cost up to the consumer. And I realized that if we are really going to be an AI power and continue to be the leader in technology, we have got to be able to get power and energy to those AI centers as well as just our general industry. So that's really what's motivated me. I don't have any doubt in my mind what the high priority is, and I've been working really hard to have blinders on to all the other distractions that exist in the role and really to focus on that.
Blinders on. Clock ticking down. Kevin Stitt, the governor of Oklahoma, appointed you to the position. He said you'd likely be influential in moving the needle on permitting reform. Talk us through that. Where do you see opportunity there? Again, with just a couple of months left in your tenure here, are you optimistic you're gonna be able to convince your colleagues there in the Senate, many of whom were there for longer than you, to make headway on that?
Yeah. And I'm really encouraged. I do think that really the chemistry is right right now. Obviously, there's some restriction on that going ahead of the midterms and the minority party really not wanting to see any success at times. But I think there's a lot of folks on both sides of the aisle that understand that we are really holding ourselves back as a country by not being able to build critical infrastructure.
Where are the places when you say critical infrastructure, what do you mean by that? Do you mean all of the above, bridges, roads, utilities? Is there one that you think is specifically bad? And, like, how did this happen? How did we get here? Why are we falling so behind?
Yeah. You know, I think we've gotten here because we've somewhat politicized the process of building big infrastructure, whether that is transmission grid, which, you know, desperately needs to be built out. And it's not always, you know, what's good for somebody's own backyard, but it's what's good for our country. And that dynamic, I think, stands in the way of us being able to get permitting done. But the way we got here is a lot of different agencies with a lot of different uncertainty in terms of what their real role is in the permitting process. And we've moved from a country that says that the agency's job is to see how we can do it in a constructive and environmentally sensitive way to one that some of our agencies, I think, think it's their job to stop getting things built. And then we have very powerful NGOs here in the country that work hard to bring litigation against large infrastructure as well. So it's really a culmination of lack of motivation, I think, by politicians in the short term to see long term infrastructure. You know, said another way, getting long term infrastructure built, not gonna lower gasoline price tomorrow. It certainly will in the long run, but it's not an immediate gratification, and therefore, it's not a very good mix for politics. And so that's one of the reasons that I find myself in a unique situation to really bring attention to the long term issue of getting our permitting done here in the US.
6 more exchanges in this transcript
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Armstrong, A. (2026, June 7). Sen. Armstrong Advocates for Energy Infrastructure Expansion [Interview transcript]. Bloomberg Television. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/971317/
MLA
Alan Armstrong. "Sen. Armstrong Advocates for Energy Infrastructure Expansion." Bloomberg Television, 7 Jun. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/971317/.
BibTeX
@misc{armstrong2026_971317,
author = {Alan Armstrong},
title = {Sen. Armstrong Advocates for Energy Infrastructure Expansion},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, Bloomberg Television. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {jun},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/971317/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
