Yeah.

Welcome to the Aaron Harbor show.

Today we are in Houston, Texas at Ceraweek by S&P global.

Leaders aren't asked to lead.

They just do.

For more than 100 years, Williams has delivered clean, affordable natural gas.

Our future is defined by our ability to provide infrastructure solutions for the next generation of the global energy market.

Leading means serving as the reliable, responsible, innovative bridge betwee the past, present, and future.

Leading means learning, reaching and constantly innovating.

While we continue to focus on immediate opportunities anchored in natural gas to reduce emissions and scale renewables.

We are looking forward and anticipating future technologies.

Welcome to the Aaron Harbor Show.

This is part two of our two part series with Alan Armstrong, the presiden and CEO of Williams Companies.

Alan, thanks again for joining me.

Hey, Aaron, how are you?

I'm good.

Hey, great having you on the show.

I know we've tried to do this for a long time.

Yeah, really excited to be here and appreciate what you do.

Well, that's kind of you.

And I think your your assessment of the president is right.

I think he, he's realized that the machete approach really isn't the right way to go.

And, even, you know, firing all the probationary people.

I mean, certainly thos are the easiest people on fire because they they're they're defenseless.

On the other hand, when you think about it, you know, a lot of these are younger people, highly talented people, probably better at technology than folks a little older, like you and me, perhaps.

And so, you know, you may be it again.

Instead of evaluating, you know, which of the 60,000 or whatever is you want to fire 200,000, you know, you're getting rid of some really good people and at the same time doing exactly what you said, which is there are people in positions who who probably are safe, who likely are sayin exactly what you said, which is, I can I'm I'm a star.

I can yeah, I can go anywhere.

And this place is going to be a mess.

I don't want to be the the one cleaning it up.

So I'm out of here.

So you lose that kind of, you know, you lose the the mature highly talented person as well.

Did you know that the fastest way to slow global warming is to reduce emissions from the gas?

Methane.

Methane is an invisible, odorless greenhouse gas.

But it's powerful.

And according to the IPCC, it's responsible for about 0.5 degrees of the global warming we've experienced to date.

Methane traps 84 times more heat than carbon dioxide in the first 20 year that it's released into the air, and the amount of it in our atmosphere has been surging for the last 15 years.

The faste the planet's temperatures rise, the more likely and the sooner we will see irreversible damage to our environment.

So where does all this methane come from?

60% of the methane in our atmosphere comes from human activity, and the rest comes from natural sources like wetlands and permafrost melting methane from natural sources will keep rising while the planet heats up.

But methane from human sources is preventable, with the right public policies in place.

Most methane pollution caused by human activity comes from fossil fuels, agriculture and waste.

35% of methane comes from oil, gas and coal.

32% of methane comes from animals raised for meat and dairy, 19% comes from waste such as landfills and sewage.

Anothe 8% comes from rice cultivation, and the rest comes from biomass burning.

Bio gas production and industry.

I want to jump to climate change.

Well, what do you think?

You know, when I say the industry's perspective on climate change is the vast majority, the majority of people in, certainly in the fossil fuel industry don't see climate change as serious an issue as people outside of it.

And I have one theory about that I'll share with you in a second, but, but where are you?

What what's your you know, what's your perception of of what people say collectively as a population.

And there is very much a concern and that is going to affect markets.

And, and I think that is what companies like Mike William are very much trying to address.

And so we've been we've been the biggest fans of going after methane reduction, fugitive methane reduction.

Because frankly, it's the only intelligent response I've heard from the opposition about why they don't want to us natural gas to reduce emissions is the concern over fugitive methane emissions.

And we said, well, gosh you know, that's just plumbing.

That's not this isn't that hard.

To reduce fugitive methane emissions.

We can do that in our operations and do it effectively.

In fact, we're we're way below we're about four times below the 1% standard that the industry set for itself.

We just on the allocation of that 1 that goes across our operations.

We're about four times below that standard, and we're on track to be at .03 to 6% by 2028.

And we are hell ben as an organization to get there.

We're not doing that, just it is the right thin to do, and we're going to do it because we think it's good for our industry, it's good for our company.

But there's also a market for it.

When we start selling LNG internationally.

The European Commission is going to have standards associated with being able to certif your fugitive methane emissions.

And we see it as a way to distinguish ourselves in a very positive way.

So we really taking it all in from, hey, there's a market here.

The thing that that is frustrating, I think, to people is that we haven't been able to take the elected officials and make law about it.

You know, we don't have a carbon tax.

We don't have should be a thing.

I think I think we ought to have carbon pricing.

I think if we put carbon pricing out there, I think the market would find a way to effectively address that.

Short of that, for instance, people blocking pipelines, because what they really want to block is fossil fuel use, right?

Not because they were worrie about the water quality impact of crossing the river.

So so I don't like th the fact that it's turned into a whack a mole process, because w don't really have law in place that allows us to, in a sustainable way, go after reducing emissions across our footprint.

Very complex topic, very difficult subject.

A lot of, you know, a lot of religiou perspective on each side of it.

I can tell you from Williams standpoint, though, we recognize it as a market opportunity way to distinguish ourselves in a way to give the world what it's saying that it wants, you know, around the world.

And so we're we're trying to do this yourselves, to be able to address that natural gas in the here and now, in, in terms of solutions that we have that we can take on it.

Scale can dramatically reduce emissions in the short term.

That's not to say that we're not going to come u with better solutions long term, because I'm almost certain that we will.

But as we sit here toda and urgently need to be taking this on, we can dramatically reduce emissions immediately for instance, just in the in the U.S. alone, we still have, 238 coal plants that were operating in the US today.

And that is the equivalent if we would just replace those units with gas units, that's the equivalent of taking all of the passenger vehicles, gasoline fired passenger vehicles off the road in the US.

Think about think about how hard we're working to reduce those kind of emissions.

And we've got the capability of going and doing that.

We've over the last ten years, we've taken the first 500 million metri tons out with coal versus gas, and we've got an opportunity to do next.

But what's really amazing is think about how large scale that is around the world.

There's 9.8 billion metric tons of CO being coming out of coal plants today around the world.

So until we quit increasing coal usage around the world where people will say, well I don't really like natural gas because it's just keeping us addicted to fossil fuels.

I say, well, if you really are serious about reducing emissions in the here and now, why in the world would we not take advantage of a tool that we already have?

And and certainly the US as ability to produce it at a very low cost.

So, you know, one of the things that, you know, the president has done in the past, in the past, he was a big supporter o initiatives of climate change.

You kind of evolved to being unexcited.

And and now he's he's lik totally against doing anything.

He's he's canceled, research projects.

You know, he's had research project canceled.

He's had, you know, data being suppressed.

You know that's not some that's exists.

That's, you know, no longer, available banning in some cases, the use of the term climate change.

Yeah.

To me, this is kind of silly, but, you know what?

What's your your take on that?

You know, sometimes you certainly see President Trump putting balance to something that's gone too far the other way.

And I think that's a little bit of the what he's attempting to do there is to put some balance to something that's kind of gotten over.

So I mean, the fact that the fact that environmentalist have been fighting natural gas here in the US, when from 2013 to 23 we it was the number one thing according to the EIA, not according to the Energy Industry Administration situation.

According to our government, it was the number one thing, 60% of our emissions reduction here in the US came from the use of natural gas, right?

Switching coal right to the natural and the heavier part, huge environmental impact.

Extraordinary.

And it was done with economics.

It was done on a economically sustainable basis.

And so when you think about any other tool that we can use, that the rest of the worl cannot go subsidize every cut, we can't go subsidize every other country for using more expensive power.

So whatever solution you have, it has to be both environmentally sustainable and economically sustainable.

And if it's not economicall sustainable, it's not going to it's not going to take hold.

So why we can't get more support from the environmental opposition on doing that, I think is a little bit of an answer to why you see the president being so extreme in the other direction, frankly, because we're not we're not getting moderate, yo know, responses in the middle.

And that's truly what we need in the such a huge opportunity for our country.

Well, probabl what we need in a lot of sense, a lot of case across the spectrum of issues.

Wrapping up, just one more question on looking ahead with natural gas.

I mean, you have certainly transportation has been a, you know, a big factor, obviously, for oil demand.

You have, EVs that, you know, we're going to see soon, five, 600, 700 mile range on batteries.

Well, will that how do you think that will impact, the demand for energy or is a reality that, as we talked about at the beginning of the show, that, that demand no matter even no matter what happens on the transportation sid overall, that demand for energy, you know, from Ireland is going to keep going up.

Yeah.

Well, not only from I alone, but from the, you know several billion people who don't have much energy today, if any at all.

I think that' the missing element that exists when you talk about climate change, talk about energy use is assuming that energy use is going to go down around the world.

I, I, you know, the, the IEA, the International Energy Administration, came ou with their own version of that, and they actually didn't say it was a forecast.

They said it was a scenario.

Right.

And it's not it's not a forecast of what's going to happen.

And everybody everybody has taken it as well that the IEA says it will.

No, actually, IEA said that if all the countries did what they said they were going to do, we're going to see a reduction.

Well we're not we're not going to see a reduction in energy use.

And so we have to plan in practical terms for incremental energy use.

And if you if if you make that assumption, we are going as fast as we can at building out renewables, they're heavily subsidized.

We're going as fast but we're not even coming close to keeping up with the energy demand with that.

And therefore we need to think about what's the next best solution.

And the next best solution is one natural gas.

And two, reforming our permitting process is so we can build nuclear here in the U.S. at a reasonable cost.

All right.

With that leadership theme, I want to wrap up with a couple questions.

One is, how would you define great leadership?

I know that leadership is an issue that, you know, you're a student you've observed you've practiced what what what makes a great leader.

You know, I think I learne a long time being an engineer.

You know, I always though that it was as simple as well.

If you'r the smartest person in the room and you got the answer, then everybody else will get that.

And you know, everything will be great.

We just proved that's not the case.

Yeah, exactly.

And so, from my perspective, being able to understan what other people's motives are, understanding kind of what makes them tick and what they're excited about.

And, and then aligning people and finding people special, special gifts, special talent that they have to form a team, that sometimes need maybe pretty diverse in their perspective and how they come at things.

But I think, I think it really i about bringing people together and getting them aligned in one direction and having people excited about i and wanting to go take a hill, not feel like they have to go take it all.

But they're excited.

And by the way, they got to describe the Hill and so I think, I thin when you, you know, really focus your efforts on getting people aligne to pull in the same direction.

And, and really, I mean, at working that as a, in terms of a tea that I get to lead a fantastic team and the team that I get to lead, really paying attention to the dynamics on the team, understanding what makes people tick, understand what they really want to do themselves.

I think that's pretty powerful.

I can tell you I haven't had that that insight knowledge all my career.

I beat my head against the wall pretty hard, thinking, well, I got them right and they just need to figure that out.

That's what I still say that today.

So.

But but you know one of the things you touched on was that career.

So how have the challenges of of being an effective leader changed over the past 20 or 30 years?

What's what's different about being a leader today?

The skills you need compared to 30 years ago when you could tell everybody what to do.

I do think, though, that it comes again.

I think it comes with gaining a conviction.

You know, one of the things I love about Williams and the way we run our compan is every year we do a strategy set, very dense strategy session with our board, and I don't and I remember a a young engineer thinking, man, what a waste of time that is like that.

We work on that and work on that and it goes on the shelf.

Nobody ever uses it in th world.

They do it in this work.

But today we really use that to gain alignment amongst our board.

Like we are going to have conviction to the strategy.

And so now's the time to each you know, speak now or forever hold your peace.

Because once we stack hands on the strategy, we're going to go execute on this.

And and we're going to watch for things changing.

And if things do change from this set of expectations that we have, then we're going to change our strategy.

But I love that about leadership is gaining conviction and having everybody around the room say, I'm on board for that.

I'm on board for that.

And and I think once you get that and people are really convicted, they're not wondering about where we're going.

I think people can really put their heart and soul into making it happen.

So if you had to last leadership question, you know, the give an example of 1 or 2, people you thought were great leaders, whether historically or currently, yo know, comes who comes to mind?

One thin I'll say about leadership is it it takes a different person for different circumstances.

I've seen leaders be really really good in times of crisis, but they weren't necessarily the most strategic people.

So in other words, when when there is a burning platform and it is we have to go execute on this, that takes a special kind of leader.

And then there's some times where you need somebody to sit back and think more strategically and take the time to form a conviction to a position because it's not so obvious where you need to go.

So I would just say I've see all kinds of different leaders.

I would say, you know, people that I watch today and I and I've been very impressed with, I think Jamie Dimon has been an exceptional bank leader, and he's actually waded into the world of energy.

He hosts a conferenc every year that he put together because he was tired of hearing us call the environmentalist bad people and environmental calling us bad people.

So he puts us all in a room every year in Scottsdale.

So I think that's kind of extraordinary leadership, you know, to to force people to try to work together.

So I think I, you know, he always kind of comes to mind as somebody I think that's been pretty meani I think, you know, interestingly enough, this kind of seem odd, but I thought Joe Manchin was actually showed some real leadership characteristics by getting people to move some things together.

You know, when he was a Democrati senator, I thought I thought he, you know, accomplished some pretty impressive things as well.

Yeah, I was disappointed, Joe didn't run for, for reelection, but that that would have been a tough race.

Yeah, for sure, but you never know.

Okay.

Quickly.

What is one thing Americans should know that you would like them to know?

I think it's very important for people to know that the great infrastructure that we have here in the U has been built in an environment where people were supportive of getting things built, a governmen that wasn't standing in the way.

It was actually supporting getting things built.

And we have learned to take that for granted.

And if we're not careful, we're going to wind up woefully short on the infrastructure.

We need to be a leader in AI, a leader in, serving LNG demand around the world.

We have a huge opportunity on this front, and we have got to find a way to get out of or out of our own way on this, because we are really, on the precipice of either doing it or not doing it.

And we've got to get our infrastructure bill.

Nobody ever cares about a bridge in detail until it fails.

Right.

And I'm just telling you, we, you know, here a couple of years ago in winter 22, we almost lost the city of Seattle on gas.

So you don't just lose when yo lose gas service to a big city, you don't just it doesn't just like hav a brownout, power comes back on.

You're out.

Pilot lights are out.

You're weeks and months before you restore service to a city like that.

And the reason people don't know that is we haven't had those outages.

But but that is because we've lived in an environment where people encouraged the build of infrastructure.

And we're not getting that support in local state government today that we desperately need.

All right.

Last question.

If you could change one thing in the United States, what would it be on the political front?

It's where I would you know, look to bring change.

And I'd really like to get back to a situation where people are encouraged and get rewarded for working for our country's benefi and not their party's benefit.

Number one.

And to maybe to to go along with that, an environment where i you're not the elected official, you don't get to make the rules up just because you don't like them.

And so and I mean that relative to how much influence the environmental opposition has had in the courts, even though they're not th elected officials and, and so, you know, those are two things that I know you asked for one, but I think those kind of have to go together.

But, I mean, we have we have so much capability in this country.

We are so far ahead of the rest of the world in energy technology, in our ability to do things i a clean and responsible manner.

And I don't know wh we don't just get really excited about our capabilities and pat ourselves on the back and get moving instead of condemning ourselves for what we've accomplished.

So I'm very encouraged that w can, you know, get back to, to, to a place where we're actually encouraging infrastructure, but we really need to get on it.

Frank.

Well, the potential is there.

Alan.

Thanks so much.

Yeah.

Thank you very much.

Really enjoyed it.

You bet.

That's all the time we have for part two of our two part series with Alan Armstrong, the president and CEO of Williams companies make sure you watch part one.

I'm Aaron Harbor.

Thanks for watching.

And.

Hi, I'm Aaron Harbor.

The goal of my show is to inform viewer about a diverse range of topics, from our country's leadership to economic and tax policies to energy and environmental issues.

With the participation of the most significant stakeholders in each arena, our long form approach gives each guest the time to fully speak his or her mind and gives the audience all the facts.

Allowing everyon to draw their own conclusions.

Thank God you do your homework, and just doing what you do is enough to begin to let them know what's happening.

I strive to bring together guests with perspectives from across the entire political spectrum to promote problem resolution through civil discourse.

Keith Olbermann and Glenn Beck and Rush Bay.

Frightening people and using emotion.

Fear, guilt and racism.

What a bunch from the right and the left.

I've personally experienced our democratic system from the inside, and I use my knowledge and expertise on the show to get clarification of major points and expand the discussion to ensure my audience gets the uncut truth.

What is this bigotr against a third party candidate?

Do the two parties own al the voters and everyone else is?

Shut up and stand in line.

We were on the campus together at Princeton University.

Her Majesty does not look any different than she did in those days, and I wish I could say the same about myself.

I'm an ardent supporte of transparency and government, and strive to play an active role in bringing out all the facts related to our nation's most challenging issues.

One of the things I've learned in life, and you certainly have learned from doing your show, is you got smart people, but they're torn apart, they're polarized.

You get into a media environment where it's not things like your show, but the shout shows on talk radio or cable TV in which there's just this tendency to score political points and be polarized.

Since my days in national talk radio, I've upheld a tradition of being truly nonpartizan, something which seems rare on the airwaves today.

Depending on your point of view, a decision of the Supreme Court might be the wrong one.

I've also found my guests talk to others involved in our nation's leadership, and they have encouraged the to come on the program as well.

We are not final because we're infallible, but we are infallible because we're final.

Now.

No one knows what that means.

But I know.

But what it means is we do not have the last word because we are so brilliant.

We are, of course, brilliant, but only only in the sense that somebody has to have the last word.

It's the focus on issues rather than personal attacks that makes guests comfortable and gives them the chance to tell their entire story.

I simply let guests explain their perspective completely, then dig deeper for the audience by drawing from my own knowledge and experience.

Democracy succeeds when you're giving more and more things to people, but the years ahead, we're going to have to ask more of them in taxes and expect less from government.

There doesn't seem to be anyone in either party that has any kind of appetite for asking more of people tax wise.

Am I wrong about that?

No, you're probably right.

And that's a flaw in democracy.

Thanks for taking the time to check out the show.

I hope this has been helpful in illustrating the nation's need for a balanced, nonpartisan progra to shed light on today's issues.

For more information, please go to Harbor Dot tv.com or email producer at Harbor tv.com.

And thanks for watching.

Hi, I'm Erin, host of the Erin Harbor Show.

Right now everyone is stressed out and some people really need extra support.

This is the time to reach ou to family, friends, and others.

And if you or someone you know needs help or is in crisis, please contact any of these agencies.

There are many people waiting to assist you and anyone else who needs help in these difficult times.

Please don't hesitate t reach out now to help yourself and others.

I'm Erin, host of the Aaron Harbor Show.

With the explosion in scams in the billions of dollars people have been losing every year.

I want to remind everyone there are ways you can protect yourself.

Start with lookin at the websites on your screen.

Don't answer calls or text from anyone you don't know.

Governmen agencies will never call to ask for personal information or money.

Government payments you never need to be confirmed in advance.

Do not give out your Social Security or Medicare number, credit card or bank account information or passwords to anyone you don't know.

A prize you supposedly won, which requires any kind of payment, is a scam.

Never send money or gift cards to someone you don't know.

Look carefully at email addresses so you aren't tricke into thinking it's legitimate.

And don't open emails from anyone you don't know.

Delete all emails which asks you to log into an account and protect yourself by visiting the websites you've seen on the screen.

For more information.