Tulsa, OK – Americans for Prosperity-Oklahoma (AFP-OK) State Director John Tidwell urged Congress to pass Sen. Alan Armstrong’s American Energy and Mineral Infrastructure Act (S.4944) in a Tulsa World op-ed published on Sunday. Oklahoma remains one of the nation’s top energy exporters, but the broken permitting system in Washington threatens to impede the state’s capabilities unless something changes.
“Companies make investment decisions years in advance. When permitting becomes unpredictable […] those costs reach consumers through higher utility bills,” Tidwell wrote. “Congress has debated permitting reform for years, but growing energy demand has made the need for action increasingly urgent.”
Because of that increasingly urgent demand for reliable power, the piece urges lawmakers to take up and pass S.4944. The bill would streamline overlapping federal reviews to expedite permitting approvals while simultaneously ensuring environmental laws address legitimate concerns rather than create needless procedural headaches.
“This would establish one coordinated federal review for interstate natural gas projects while preserving state input on legitimate environmental concerns […] Guardrails and environmental review can — and should — remain part of the process. But they should operate within a permitting system that provides timely, consistent decisions […] Oklahoma has spent generations helping power the U.S. With a permitting system that provides timely, consistent decisions, our state can continue building the infrastructure needed to meet the country’s growing energy needs for generations.”
Read the full opinion piece here.