releases: https://www.armstrong.senate.gov/armstrong-on-535-news-its-time-to-do-whats-right-for-the-country/
Data license: MIT · Data source: dwillis/congress-press
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| https://www.armstrong.senate.gov/armstrong-on-535-news-its-time-to-do-whats-right-for-the-country/ | Armstrong on 535 News: It’s Time to Do What’s Right for the Country | 2026-09-16 | 2026 | 2026-09 | Republican | Senate | OK | Alan Armstrong | A000383 | www.armstrong.senate.gov | armstrong | https://www.armstrong.senate.gov/news/media-center/ | scraper | FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 17, 2026 CONTACT: Chrissy Harbin, Miranda Dabney Armstrong on 535 News: It’s Time to Do What’s Right for the Country ARMSTRONG CALLS FOR BIPARTISAN COURAGE TO FIX BROKEN FEDERAL APPROVAL PROCESSES ACROSS RENEWABLE, MINING, AND OIL & GAS SECTORS WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator Alan Armstrong (R-OK) appeared on the Capitol Hill-focused 535 News this week to urge immediate congressional action on federal permitting reform. Drawing from his decades of experience as an engineer and later the CEO of the Williams Companies, Armstrong outlined how bureaucratic gridlock and endless judicial appeals continue to undermine American energy independence, AI development, and long-term economic growth. During the interview, Armstrong emphasized that permitting reform is not an issue tailored to a single industry, but a national imperative that affects all forms of domestic energy and infrastructure development – ranging from transmission lines and critical mining material to domestic natural gas pipelines and traditional energy infrastructure. KEY EXCERPTS FROM THE INTERVIEW On the universal scope of permitting reform across all energy sectors: “It’s not one form of energy. It’s everything. It’s renewables not being able to get connected into markets that need that power. It’s pipelines not being able to displace fuel oil and coal, which is so much more expensive and so much more emissions. There are mines that we desperately need here in the U.S. to be able to continue to not have to import it from sources that are not so friendly to us… The focus of permitting reform should not be to try to select what energy source we’re going to use; it should make it simpler and with great confidence in being able to get a permit if you go through the process.” On how states arbitrarily block interstate projects under Sec. 401 of the Clean Water Act: “Nobody is asking for, ‘Hey, let’s lower the environmental protections.’ That is not what any of these bills are about. They’re simply about bringing certainty and a set of standards… Today, a state is not bound by those. A state can come up with whatever rules they want to on the fly. And so, if you have a pipeline that’s going through multiple states, and a state says, ‘Well, what am I getting out of this?’ And it becomes popular to stop it because the NGOs come in and want to have something to fight about… it’s completely arbitrary as to whether a state’s going to issue you the 401 certificate.” On the need for judicial reform and fixing regulatory uncertainty: “The bill takes on things like judicial reform, because one of the primary things that people can’t afford is to get caught up in litigation… I personally sat in a situation where we had a billion-dollar pipeline that we had spent four and a half years getting the permit done. Got the permit. It was up and running for 9 months, and a court came in and vacated a FERC certificate… You can’t have projects that are up and running, you went through all the law required, you went through an entire EIS process, and somebody comes up with something that they didn’t raise during the EIS process and raises it after the fact, holding the project up for 3.7 years.” On why existing big energy incumbents benefit from gridlock while America falls behind: “A lot of people think, ‘Well, duh, you were a pipeline executive, and so you want to come talk about permitting reform.’ Actually, the incumbent big companies, like the company that I was the CEO for, this has been a bounty to make it difficult to build when you already own a lot of the critical infrastructure. It just makes your infrastructure more and more valuable… But long-term, our country is not going to be the great country that we’ve all enjoyed… We have another round of big infrastructure that needs to be built here to support things like AI and modern manufacturing. And if we can’t get it built here, we will fall behind.” On the need for courage and integrity in the Senate: “I hope that people will stand tall to the political courage it takes to do what’s right for our country… I wish that there was much more focus on what’s good long-term for the country, even if it’s to somebody’s own political peril to get the right thing done. This is one of those circumstances where people know it’s the right thing.” | 1 | 2026-09-24T10:30:22Z | 2026-09-24T10:31:42Z |