Williams ( Energy co)
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NO MERRI
ripped off CA; cheney sealed FERC records; after enron collapse info leaked out? waxman?
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Public Radio Tulsa
Tulsa energy executive Alan Armstrong will finish Mullin's Oklahoma ...
TodayOklahoma's next U.S. Senator will be Tulsa energy executive Alan Armstrong. Armstrong most recently served on the board of Williams Companies, where he was CEO until last year. The company has 5,000 employees and its pipelines and other infrastructure handle nearly a third of the natural gas...
Oklahoma's next U.S. Senator will be Tulsa energy executive Alan Armstrong.
Armstrong most recently served on the board of Williams Companies, where he was CEO until last year. The company has 5,000 employees and its pipelines and other infrastructure handle nearly a third of the natural gas used in the United States every day.
He will finish out the term of departing Senator Markwayne Mullin, who was approved by his Senate colleagues to serve as Secretary of Homeland Security Monday.
Gov. Kevin Stitt said he selected Armstrong because of his business acumen and understanding of Oklahoma's energy industry.
"It was a non-political pick," Stitt said.
Instead, the focus is on Congress's need to act on energy infrastructure reform, he said, with a focus on streamlining the permitting process for large-scale projects.
"Alan is the right man with the right perspective to bring his leadership to walk, work across party lines and to help us get permitting reform done," Stitt said. "He's entering the US Senate at a critical time for advancing reforms to secure America's future as an energy leader."
Armstrong will serve in the Senate until January, when the winner of November's general election will take office. Oklahoma law bars him from running for the seat he was appointed to.
Armstrong said the appointment is an honor, adding that it's hard to refuse the opportunity to serve his state in Congress, given that the U.S. needs to play catch-up with the rest of the world's infrastructure developments.
"The last thing I would want to do is be sitting around complaining about what other people are not willing to step up and do," he said. "It is really a critical time for our country. I look around and realize how important energy decisions are – And in general, infrastructure decisions. And if you travel around the world these days, you realize we are falling behind on being the leaders in infrastructure."
Reporters asked Armstrong if he would focus on any other policy areas besides energy, and whether his focus on that topic raised potential conflicts of interest, considering his leadership role at Williams. He said reforming energy project permitting is his top priority, given the limited time he has to serve. And that he's not concerned about a conflict.
"It's not really the Senate's role to approve individual projects," He said. " Really that gets done at places like the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). And so that's not something that I would have jurisdiction over. My goal is going to be to get permitting reform done for all forms of energy. And I don't see that as a conflict at all."
He also said his recent conversations with President Donald Trump were promising and supportive."It was a great meeting – very strong support for me," Armstrong said. "I think the fact that I've worked with his cabinet, particularly Secretary Burgum and Secretary Wright. I think it was pretty important in me having his support because those gentlemen know how hard I've been working to try to get permitting reform done."
Douglas Burgum and Chris Wright serve as Trump's Secretaries of the Interior and Energy, respectively.
The selection of Armstrong spurred some controversy among conservatives due to a donation he made to former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Illinois, in March 2021. Kinzinger has been highly critical of Trump for pushing the idea that he is the rightful winner of the 2020 election, and voted to impeach him.
Thousands of Americans stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021 because of their belief that the election was "stolen" from Trump. There is no evidence to support that claim.
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see zetero interv bedoyan 8 12? 25
msn 3 mos before aug
trump-wants-to-let-price-fixing-oil-execs-off-the-hook
the Trump administration is giving executives a pass for an alleged price-fixing scheme after they contributed millions to the Republican Party this past election, including the Trump campaign and his inauguration fund.
To reward the oil and gas industry for its political loyalty, Donald Trump’s chair of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Andrew Ferguson, took the first steps last month to lift regulatory restrictions imposed on a pair of the sector’s preeminent CEOs and Trump backers. The two were placed under consent orders by the Biden administration for colluding with foreign governments to raise oil prices.
In an op-ed this week, Ferguson made it clear that he intends to fulfill the executives’ petitions to the agency requesting this rollback, so they can rejoin the boards of their companies. “I’m asking my colleagues to undo the onerous and illegal consent decrees put in place by my FTC predecessor against oil and gas companies,” he wrote.
Chevron also submitted a petition to the agency after contributing $2 million to Trump’s inauguration fund.
Under Democratic FTC chair Lina Khan, the agency banned Scott Sheffield, CEO of Pioneer Oil, from joining the board of Exxon, which had recently acquired his company. A few months later, the FTC did the same to block Hess Oil CEO John Hess from taking a board position at Chevron after the two firms merged.
The agency took these actions after finding evidence during their merger reviews that Sheffield and Hess had separately colluded with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to manage oil production. OPEC is a cartel of producers from the oil-rich Middle East region and Russia that have an outsize impact on the entire global energy market.
According to a trove of documents and communications obtained by the agency, both execs conspired with OPEC leaders to keep oil supply low and raise prices to capitalize on market volatility following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. The FTC referred the case to the Department of Justice for a potential criminal complaint, and Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee opened a wider probe into potential collusion across energy markets. The congressional investigation is still ongoing.
Oil and gas heads were incensed that regulators would take action against two of their most esteemed titans of industry. At a campaign fundraiser last year, Trump personally promised irate oil executives that he’d treat them more favorably after several complained specifically about the FTC’s meddling in their merger and acquisition deals, according to theWashington Post.
Shortly after the FTC imposed the consent orders, campaign contributions from Sheffield and Hess, their family members, business associates, and companies started flowing to the Trump campaign.
Sheffield is a longtime rainmaker in Texas GOP politics, spending a total of $4.2 million in federal and state elections since 2020, including contributions from his family members and his company. His son, Bryan Sheffield — who sold his own oil company to his father in 2021 and went to work for him — gave $413,000 to the Republican National Committee for a fund designated to boost the Trump campaign just weeks after his father was put under consent order by the FTC. The younger Sheffield also maxed out individual contributions to the Trump campaign last year.
Sheffield remains on the board of the Williams Companies, a natural gas producer, which gave $25,000 to the RNC fund last year and $500,000 to other GOP spending vehicles.
Hess, a longtime Trump backer, gave a million to Trump’s first inaugural committee through his oil company and was later named to Trump’s Opening the Country Council in 2020 for post-pandemic economic recovery. Trump received $96 million from fossil fuel interests overall last election cycle, one of his top sources of fundraising.
This article was first published by the*Lever*, an award-winning independent investigative newsroom.
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In March 2001, while California's two largest utilities were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, and the state's electricity crisis was spiraling out of control, Vice President Dick Cheney summoned Curt Hebert, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), to his office next to the White House for a hastily arranged meeting.
Cheney had just been informed by his longtime friendThomas Cruikshank, the man who handpicked the vice president to succeed him at Halliburton in the mid-1990s, that federal energy regulators were close to completing an investigation into allegations that Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Williams Companies and AES Corporationof Arlington, Virginia had created an artificial power shortage in California in April and May of 2000 by shutting down a power plant for more than two weeks.
Cruikshank was a member of Williams's board of directors, and perhaps more importantly, had been one of many energy industry insiders advising Cheney's energy task force on a wide-range of policy issues, including deregulation of the nation's electricity sector,that would benefit Williams financially.
Cruikshank informed the vice president he had learned about the preliminary findings of FERC's investigation during a Williams board meeting earlier in March 2001. FERC, Cruikshank told Cheney, wasin possession of incriminating audio tapes in which a Williams official and an AES power plant operator discussed keeping a Southern California power plant offline so Williams could continue to receive the $750 per megawatt hour premium for emergency power California's grid operator was forced to procure to keep the lights on in Southern California.
AES was the operator of two power plants in Los Alamitos and Williams marketed the electricity. The power plants were designated by the California Independent System Operator (ISO), the agency that manages the state's power grid, as crucial in order to ensure a reliable flow of electricity in the Southern part of the state.To stave off the potential for blackouts, the ISO was given the authority to pay top dollar for power if the power plants operated by AES, as well as power plants operated by other companies, were not in operation.
California's electricity crisis wreaked havoc on consumers in the state between 2000 and 2001. The crisis resulted in widespread rolling blackouts and forced thestate's largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, into bankruptcy. California was the first state in the nation to deregulate its power market in an effort to provide consumers with cheaper electricity and the opportunity to choose their own power provider. The results have since proved disastrous. The experiment has cost the state more than $30 billion.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_Companies
wiki
The Williams Companies, Inc.| 
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| Type | Public company |
|---|---|
| Traded as | |
| Industry | Oil and Gas |
| Founded | 1908 |
| Founder(s) | David Williams Miller Williams |
| Headquarters | Tulsa, Oklahoma, US |
| Area served | North America |
| Key people | Alan S. Armstrong (President) & (CEO) |
| Products | Oil & Natural gas |
| Revenue |  US$ 12.352 billion(2008) |
| Operating income | $ 2.624 billion (2008) |
| Net income | $ 1.418 billion (2008) |
| Total assets | $ 26.006 billion (2008) |
| Total equity | $ 8.440 billion (2008) |
| Employees | 3,913 |
| Website | www.williams.com |
The Williams Companies, Inc. is an energy company based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Its core business is natural gas processing and transportation, with additional petroleum and electricity generation assets. A Fortune 200 company, its common stock is a component of the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Utility Average.
History
It was founded as Williams Brothers in 1908 by Miller and David Williams in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and soon expanded to building nationwide pipelines for natural gas and petroleum. The company relocated to Tulsa in 1919. In 1949, John H. Williams, a nephew of the founders, together with his brother Charles Williams and David's son David Williams Jr., bought the business from the founders; John H. Williams remained as president of the company until 1971 and CEO until 1979.[1]
The company went public in 1957 under the Williams Brothers name. As it diversified in the 1970s, it was renamed The Williams Companies, Inc. Since 1997, their brand identity has been simplified to "Williams".
In 1966, Williams bought the then-largest petroleum products pipeline in America, known as the Great Lakes Pipe Line Company, for about $287 million. In 1982, it expanded into natural gas transportation with the purchase of Northwest Energy Company, and extended their reach to the East Coast with the 1995 purchase of Transco Energy Company.
In 2001, Williams acquired Barrett Resources, which provided them with additional national gas reserves.
In 2002, the company found itself in financial distress due to changed market conditions and the large debt of its subsidiary Williams Communications Group. The company obtained and paid off an emergency high interest loan from Warren Buffett to stay out of bankruptcy, and redirected its focus toward natural gas production, processing, and transportation as well as increasing its resource holdings. One of the moves it made around that time (2004) was the sale of 3 of Canada's largest natural gas treatment plants (extracts natural gas liquids from it) to Inter Pipeline Fund for US$540 million.[2]
In 2010, the company underwent a major restructuring that included a reorganization of its extensive pipeline holdings in Williams Partners LP.[3] On October 2010, Williams and Williams Partners L.P. announced that Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Steve Malcolm will retire at the end of the year. The Board of Directors at Williams said it has elected Alan Armstrong to succeed Malcolm as CEO effective January 3, 2011. Armstrong has served as senior vice president of Williams since 2002.[4]
On Feb. 16, 2011 Williams' board of directors has approved pursuing a plan to separate the company's businesses into two stand-alone, publicly traded corporations. The plan calls for Williams to separate its exploration and production business via an initial public offering (IPO) in third-quarter 2011 of up to 20 percent of its interest and, in 2012, a tax-free spinoff to Williams shareholders of its remaining interest.[5]
Telecommunications
The company helped to get the modern telecommunications industry off the ground by running fiber optic cable through its decommissioned pipelines. It built two nationwide networks, which have since become their own companies; the first was sold in 1995 to LDDS (which would become WorldCom & then MCI) and the second was spun off in 2001 as Williams Communications (which would become WilTel Communications and later consolidate into Level 3 Communications).
Lawsuits
In 2002, Williams Communications Group was sued for that company officials did not properly disclose the failing company's true financial condition, and that officials' public statements belied the firm's plummeting fiscal picture.[6] In 2007, the Williams Companies agreed to pay $290 million.
Telecommunications
The company helped to get the modern telecommunications industry off the ground by running fiber optic cable through its decommissioned pipelines. It built two nationwide networks, which subsequently spun off into separate companies. The first was sold in 1995 to LDDS, which would become WorldCom & then MCI). The second was spun off in 2001 as Williams Communications, filed for bankruptcy the following year[9] adopted the name WilTel Communications, and ultimately was acquired by and consolidated into Level 3 Communications.[10]
Lawsuits and fines
In 2002, Williams Communications Group was sued for that company officials did not properly disclose the failing company's true financial condition, and that officials' public statements belied the firm's plummeting fiscal picture.[11] In 2007, the Williams Companies agreed to pay $290 million.
Boardwalk Pipeline Partners and the Williams Companies were fined $2.4 million for 18 incidents that took place between 2006 and 2013 that include failing to monitor corrosion and waiting to repair a natural gas line showing metal loss in Kentucky.[12]
References
- "Former Williams executive dies at 94", The Oklahoman, May 2, 2013.
- "Alaska gas liquids at forefront of Alberta straddle-plant deal". 2004-07-08.
- Rod Walton, "CEO of Williams Cos. to retire: Malcolm gets praise for company turnaround", Tulsa World, October 13, 2010.
- Williams (WMB) CEO Malcolm to Retire; Armstrong Named Successor,[1], October 12, 2010
- Williams to Pursue Separating Into Two Stand-Alone, Publicly Traded Companies; Boosts Dividend 60%, [2], Feb. 16, 2011
- "Class Action Lawsuit Against Williams Communications Group".
External link
- Official site
- Hoovers summary
- Voices of Oklahoma interview with John Williams. First person interview conducted with John Williams on December 15, 2009. Original audio and transcript archived with Voices of Oklahoma oral history project.
- "Williams Companies" at Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture