Senator Alan Armstrong on Building American Energy Infrastructure

Senator Alan Armstrong used his first months in the Senate to press a practical, CEO‑informed agenda for permitting reform focused on predictability and litigation reform. Drawing on nearly 40 years at Williams (15 as CEO) and his prior public roles (former chair of the National Petroleum Council), Armstrong told Jason Bordoff he is frustrated by Senate floor dynamics but optimistic there is a narrow, bipartisan window to act. His core diagnosis is procedural: long, duplicative reviews and permissive judicial remedies — especially NEPA case law built around the “arbitrary and capricious” standard and post‑hoc state §401 reviews — make project approvals ripe for delay and litigation monetization. He illustrated the harm with industry examples (a finished regional energy access project vacated by the D.C. Circuit; recurring problems with the Constitution pipeline and Transco) to argue courts should remand regulatory defects rather than routinely vacate permits and that standing should be limited to parties who can show real harm.

Armstrong outlined specific policy fixes: require concurrent federal‑state review within a single EIS led by a named federal agency (often FERC for interstate infrastructure), codify §401 timing and water‑quality standards so states can’t change rules midstream, tighten judicial standards and timelines, and protect lawfully issued permits from automatic vacatur. He emphasized the bill is energy‑source neutral — no implicit subsidies, no single‑state veto — and said industry groups from renewables to hydropower have coalesced around the approach. Jason Bordoff pressed environmental and equity concerns; Armstrong insisted reforms won’t degrade protections and cited the Supreme Court’s “Seven Counties” decision as helpful guardrails against speculative, distant impacts (e.g., generalized GHG chain effects) being shoehorned into project NEPA reviews. He also warned of an emerging political fault line: NGOs and some left‑leaning members who depend on litigation and §401 as leverage may resist reform. Finally, Armstrong tied permitting to geopolitics and markets — noting rapid growth in data‑center demand, divergent global gas prices during recent Hormuz shocks, and the risk that constraining infrastructure will push costs onto consumers and hamper U.S. competitiveness. He urged congressional committees (EPW, Energy & Natural Resources) to draft and drop legislation quickly to seize the bipartisan opening.