US energy firm CEOs express confidence in permitting bill passage in Congress

Several executives at major US energy companies said they are confident a Senate reform bill can pass Congress with bipartisan support.

An emphasis on affordability in the midterm elections helped Democrats win an incoming congressional majority, which could bolster prospects for the legislation, executives said Nov. 11.

"Anyone that votes against this bill does not take affordability seriously," said Chad Zamarin, president and CEO of The Williams Cos. Inc.

Zamarin, along with Toby Rice, president and CEO of EQT Corp., and Jonathan Webb, CEO of The Nuclear Co., said that they expect Republicans and Democrats to work together to pass permitting reform legislation that would enable more energy infrastructure to be built. The trio were among the panelists at the B20 USA Summit in Washington, DC, hosted by the US Chamber of Commerce.

EQT has the Mountain Valley Pipeline that transports natural gas out of the Marcellus Shale, but many other pipeline efforts to move Appalachian gas to Northeast markets have been blocked, Zamarin and Rice said. Under the current regulatory structure and legal challenges to new gas pipelines, more than 7 billion cubic feet/day of pipeline capacity has across multiple projects has been canceled over the years, Rice said.

The result has been low natural gas commodity prices in much of the US, but high winter gas prices in New England because of limited pipeline infrastructure, Zamarin said.

The permitting reform measures in the Senate legislation would enable new infrastructure to be built to meet rising electricity demand, the panelists said.

"We're not going to be able to make things more affordable if we're not able to build the necessary infrastructure that's going to do exactly that," Rice told Platts, part of S&P Global Energy, in a brief interview.

Votes will be held in the Senate on amendments to the bill while Republicans retain the majority in Congress during the lame duck session. Although some Senate Democrats voted against the bill in a cloture vote to advance it to the Senate floor for consideration and amendments, the vote was 73-25, and Democrats appear to be supporting the bill to gain passage in both chambers of Congress, speakers said during the B20 event.

"If the Democracts came together in this bipartisan way and got permitting done, it would be our first, best sign that they can work together to address affordability," said Suzanne Clark, president and CEO of the US Chamber of Commerce. The incoming majority leaders in Congress need to take the voters' mandate for change seriously, "because the voters did not say we want more politics, they said we want governing."

"I'm confident that even through the amendment process, we're going to have something that is going to help us get back to building infrastructure," Rice told Platts.

Both the private sector and policymakers need to engage better with local communities so that they understand the benefits of new infrastructure, said Webb. Infrastructure that includes pipelines, power plants, transmission lines and data centers can improve lives for multiple generations, including by providing energy for new technologies, he said.

The Nuclear Co. is planning to build six Westinghouse AP1000 reactors in Lewis County, Kentucky, to generate 6.6 gigawatts of power on the banks of the Ohio River, and "that community wants it more than we do," Webb said. The region has coal-fired power plants closing and increased electricity demand from data centers, so "they understand what's at stake," he said.

Data center pushback addressed

Another takeaway from the midterm elections was that voters in many states overwhelmingly supported restrictions on data center development.

"We're trying to decipher how much of the data center pushback was rhetoric to fuel election cycles," Rice said. Concerns about data center development are a natural reaction, but energy and data center companies have ways to address them, including lower costs for residents, tax revenue for schools and local economies, and job growth, Rice and Zamarin said.

"I think there's actually going to be some healthy optimism that comes through this point of tension and somewhat turmoil," Zamarin said of the data center opposition. "You will see only the best projects and only the best companies that thrive in this environment, and I think that's important," he said. Williams'

Williams is providing gas service for the planned Socrates data center complex with Meta near New Albany Ohio, with gas-fired generation at the site and roughly $700 million in wages being paid to the local community, Zamarin said.