Imagine stepping out of the corner office as a major energy CEO and immediately walking onto the Senate floor to hand a giant L to the federal bureaucracy. That is exactly what Senator Alan Armstrong, R-Okla., is doing. Sworn in on March 24, 2026, to replace Markwayne Mullin (who left to run DHS), the former CEO of Williams Companies has decided that his short stint in the Senate is going to be spent doing something incredibly based: actually cutting the red tape that has kept American energy development stuck in the mid-20th century.

Armstrong's major play is the American Energy and Mineral Infrastructure Act of 2026. This isn't the usual grandstanding nonsense we see on Capitol Hill; it’s a high-impact regulatory shredder. The goal is simple: make it fast and cheap for pipeline developers, LNG exporters, and natural gas producers to build things without getting bogged down in years of paperwork and activist-led lawsuits.

The most beautiful part of the bill is how it handles state-level obstruction. Right now, a single activist state can veto an entire interstate pipeline because of local NIMBY politics or environmental feelings. Armstrong's bill strips these states of their veto power by making the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) the supreme authority on interstate pipeline approvals. If the feds say it's good to go, individual states can't block it. It’s an absolute game-changer for infrastructure development.

Naturally, the professional managerial class is shaking. For years, green energy grifters have used endless environmental reviews to paralyze development. Armstrong’s bill fights back by demanding "evidence-based" environmental reviews and expanding the use of Nationwide Permits. No more letting regulators halt multi-billion-dollar projects over theoretical bugs or emotional-support climate theories. Under this bill, decisions have to be backed by actual, hard science.

The former CEO’s old company, Williams, spelled it out clearly in a statement: "There’s no magic, overnight fix to lower prices, but comprehensive, meaningful permitting reform will ensure that the U.S. remains the global leader in energy." They correctly warned that while the U.S. sits on its hands, global adversaries like China are moving ahead, and ordinary American consumers are the ones stuck paying the price through sky-high utility bills.

The timing couldn't be better. With the rapid rise of AI, the U.S. is facing a massive energy crisis. AI data centers consume insane amounts of power, and we can't run them on hopes, dreams, and unreliable solar panels. We need natural gas, and we need it now. If we don’t build the pipelines to feed these data centers, China is going to eat our lunch in the AI race. Armstrong’s bill recognizes that technological dominance requires actual physical power.

To push this through, Armstrong has assembled a based squad of co-sponsors, including Senators Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, Rick Scott of Florida, and Katie Britt of Alabama, along with nearly two dozen energy companies who actually know how to build things. This coalition is ready to bypass the bureaucratic swamp and get American industry moving again, following in the footsteps of previous executive moves like the Bridger Pipeline expansion and reviving parts of the Keystone XL.

For too long, the U.S. has let midwits and bureaucratic gatekeepers control the economic engine of the country. Armstrong’s bill is a direct challenge to that stagnation. By centralizing permitting authority and forcing regulators to use actual evidence, the American Energy and Mineral Infrastructure Act of 2026 is the exact kind of high-energy deregulation the country needs to power the future.

Sources: * Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC): https://www.ferc.gov * U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA): https://www.eia.gov * U.S. Congress Legislative Database: https://www.congress.gov