It Costs More To Permit Infrastructure Than To Build It — But One Lawmaker Wants To Change That

Drew Bonds writes about America’s broken permitting process for the Washington Star.

“A project we’re working on right now — the permitting cost is twice as much as we’re spending on the pipe. And this is if everything goes well.”

That was Alan Armstrong, then the CEO of Williams Companies and now Oklahoma senator, speaking last year at CERAWeek, the premier global energy conference. The head of a nearly $100 billion firm wanted the crowd to understand just how serious our permitting problem has become. When getting a government green light costs more than building, energy infrastructure crumbles and American prosperity, growth, and innovation take a big hit.

America has more energy resources than any nation on earth. What stops those resources benefiting consumers is a permitting system so broken that pushing paper is more difficult than digging mile-deep wells, scaling mountains with pipelines, or building a 40,000-square-foot refinery.

Read more in the Washington Star here!