Given the chance to crown a new senator, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt chose a little-known businessman with no political history.

Why? He thought it was his best shot at accelerating major energy and infrastructure projects, Stitt told NOTUS.

Stitt picked Alan Armstrong to fill Markwayne Mullin’s Senate seat after talking to Majority Leader John Thune about what it would take to get the intractable problem of permitting reform across the finish line in Congress.

“I’m going to send you an expert on this,” he said he told Thune, describing Armstrong as a “non-political appointee.”

Before coming to the Senate in March, Armstrong was the CEO of Williams Companies, which operates tens of thousands of miles of natural gas pipelines. His company has a history of lobbying Congress and the White House on comprehensive permitting reform, citing significant roadblocks to getting major projects underway.

“This guy can work with moderate Democrats. He should be able to help the senators get this done,” Stitt said.

The Oklahoma governor really wants a deal this year, and he’s optimistic that it could happen.

But it’s not clear that Stitt’s machinations can accelerate delicate negotiations, now increasingly frayed because of President Donald Trump’s hostility toward renewable energy.

The key players in the negotiations in the Senate — Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito and Democratic Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse and Martin Heinrich — all described Armstrong as a reasonable figure, but none endorsed Stitt’s pitch that his presence significantly alters the stakes.

“He’s interested, and I referred him to Chairman Capito, because I have a good relationship with her, and I think he should talk to her,” Whitehouse said. Capito and Whitehouse are the chair and ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.

When asked how helpful Armstrong could be, Whitehouse said: “Entirely up to Chairman Capito.”

Capito was measured about Armstrong’s role.

“We’ve had a lot of things in motion. Both the committee, we had a hearing in January that was very bipartisan, we’ve been working with the coalitions, we’ve worked with the House, the White House — and certainly Sen. Armstrong adds a lot of firsthand knowledge, so that’s good,” she said.

Across the country, businesses large and small — from artificial intelligence to clean energy to Main Street — are united that the nation is in dire need of relief from arduous permitting processes. Permitting gets the blame for creating decades-long timelines to build all sorts of new infrastructure like transmission lines, roads, bridges, pipelines, mines and factories.

At a bipartisan gathering of governors in Philadelphia last week, Stitt and Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro were in lockstep on their agreement that permitting reform needs to happen fast. So too were the governors of West Virginia, New Jersey and Delaware, all of whom spent time last Thursday marveling at the depths of their own agreements with each other on the issue.

Despite that bipartisan consensus, Congress has been unable to reach an agreement. And since Trump took office for his second term, he has only made the already-fragile negotiations more challenging.

Trump’s animus toward wind power specifically and renewable energy more broadly was well-known. What surprised members of Congress and state leaders alike was how Interior Secretary Doug Burgum acted on Trump’s dislike: The administration has canceled, slowed and stymied federal permits for renewables, especially offshore wind power.

In December, the Interior Department paused construction on five offshore wind projects, including one that was just months away from delivering power to Virginia’s electric grid for the first time. Those projects were ultimately restored through the courts.

Republicans had decried the Biden administration’s revocation of a key federal permit for the Keystone Pipeline. Now, Trump has been trying to do a similar rug-pull with offshore wind companies.

“I even call out my own side, because we’re doing the same thing,” Stitt told NOTUS.

Whitehouse and Heinrich walked away from permitting reform negotiations after Trump attempted to cancel the offshore wind projects.

“There was a deal to be had that would have taken politics out of permitting,” the two senators said in a statement at the time. “But any deal would have to be administered by the Trump Administration. Its reckless and vindictive assault on wind energy doesn’t just undermine one of our cheapest, cleanest power sources, it wrecks the trust needed with the executive branch for bipartisan permitting reform.”

Heinrich and Whitehouse returned to the table in early March after judges struck down the stop-work orders from Interior and the Trump administration began to signal that it might ease up on stonewalling renewables.

That’s part of the reason Stitt thinks Armstrong can make a difference.

“So now, everybody’s at the table, and that’s why I think we can get it done,” Stitt said.

“I know that Shapiro wants it. I know that the governors want it. So boom, get it done.”

The key senators aren’t expressing quite the same level of confidence. “I would certainly like to see us get to yes,” Heinrich said to NOTUS.

As for Armstrong? “I’m looking forward to sitting down with him,” Heinrich said. “I think I just got a request recently. I just met him, but he seems like an even-keeled sort of fellow, so that can’t hurt.”