When former Williams Cos. leader Alan Armstrong became the replacement for Oklahoma U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin, he understood he would hold the job for 7 months and proclaimed his number one effort would be energy permitting reform.
He repeated his claim in a new interview the Senator did with POLITICO Energy host Josh Siegel, ““I’m not campaigning. My focus is extremely narrow here. I don’t care who gets the credit on this. I just want to see it get done.“
Armstrong believes the lack of reform falls on the belief that big corporations should always bear the cost even while costs are going up for consumers.
“That has just gotten really untenable in our country and people wonder why a country with such great resources and such great capabilities is seeing their utility bills soar right now and it really boils down to the fact that we have made it so difficult here in our country for a lot of different reasons.”
Why make it his main goal in the remaining months he has as U.S. Senator?
“It’s not a sexy issue, it’s not anything that if you’re trying to get elected in the current environment that anybody’s going to say way way to go you got us that permitting bill done. But it is so important to our country and so as I pondered my ability when Governor Stitt asked me to consider doing this, I really wondered do I want to sit around in my later part of life and think I could have contributed but I didn’t to this. And so truly this is an area that I think is so important and it’s really important for somebody that’s not politically ambitious to focus on because it’s something really important for our country but it’s not something that’s going to get tackled typically by politicians that are worried about the more popular and short-term issues.”
Armstrong has already met with key legislative leaders as he works on achieving his goal. His intent is not to accomplish a bill but instead a “very meaningful” bill.
“I’m literally doing this because I think this is a great important issue for our country and I don’t want to be the guy that has regrets that I didn’t contribute what I could to this issue. he good news is I don’t care who gets the credit on this. I just want to see it get done.”
Sen. Armstrong made it clear in the interview that he thinks courts should stay out of energy projects once approved by a government agency.
“I think that once a project has a certificate I think it’s very important that a project be able to move forward and that courts shouldn’t be able to vacate a permit. So stopping certificates and permits after infrastructure has already been installed just doesn’t make any sense at all. It’s one of the things that needs to be fixed frankly.”
Watch the full interview on YouTube