Hi, this is Sandy Segrist, gas and midstream senior editor, with Hart Energy. I'm at the DUG Gas Convention in Shreveport, Louisiana. Next to me is Allen Fore, vice president of public affairs at major U.S. midstream company Kinder Morgan. Over the last 12 months, what have you seen change in the attitude as far as the potential for major pipeline projects finally getting done.

Allen Fore, vice president of public affairs, Kinder Morgan: Thanks, Sandy. It’s good to be back again in Shreveport. So when we talked last year, I think I was a little less than bullish on a major expansion of linear pipeline networks across the country. We've built arguably the largest pipeline, natural gas pipeline in the U.S., the Rockies Express, years ago from Wyoming to Pennsylvania. And those projects were tough to build then impossible to build now, a year ago. Now, what's changed? A lot has changed. Primarily the administration, President Trump and the individuals he has put into place at the regulatory agencies that have oversight over the energy industry, his prioritization of domestic energy production and energy renaissance as he's called it, and the executive orders that follow that. When I was speaking before, I was talking about the nearest thing to this I can remember is when President Reagan was running in 1980 and said some of the same things.

Very different now because President Reagan didn't have a Republican Congress. He didn't have the social media network, if you will, the apparatus across the country to quickly mobilize folks in support of something. But this is led by the administration, but also followed by the American people. Whenever, this is a polling question, whether you believe or not in polls, but consistently, when people are asked about domestic energy production, domestic energy independence, they're overwhelmingly in favor. And so now seeing an administration, President Trump and the administration, leading this effort, heads of agencies in this space, Department of Energy, EPA [Environmental Protection Agency], federalized regulatory commission related Department of Interior, whatever it is, actually beginning quickly taking steps to make things happen. I think that's the game changer here. It really is a generational game changer with what's happening from the Trump administration. Now, challenges still exist on the backend.

We have talked about legal issues that hold up projects, NGOs filing to stop projects in friendly legal environments, they believe, that ultimately are going to fail because these projects are permitted by state and federal governments. But it will slow them down, potentially. There has to be something to address that. Everybody is for projects that are in the best interest of all stakeholders involved. You're talking about natural gas projects to provide energy to end users and who are end users? Every molecule we have in a pipeline goes to a human being, whether it's a home or you turn on the gas on your stove, whether it's lights, when you turn on your lights from natural gas fired power generation, which so much more of our energy is coming from, or whether you're expanding your business or building a data center or a car plant or a small business.

All of this, it goes somewhere. So when we expand, it's for every molecule of that to go somewhere else. We have $6 billion in expansion projects. If it's for LNG export, every molecule of that is going to make this world a better place for folks who don't have that energy around the world. So that being the priority, I think is part of the game changer piece from the Trump administration. And it's an exciting time to be in the business because again, our business is delivering that energy, making sure that we have the energy security and as the president said, energy dominance. That's going to be just amazingly helpful for the country.

SS: Okay. Well, talking about providing the service, Kinder Morgan currently has two multi-billion projects going on in the southeast. What is driving movement into that area of the country?

AF: Yeah, we have our South System Expansion 4 project, which is an expansion of our existing natural gas pipeline system in those states beginning in Mississippi through Alabama and to eastern Georgia. That's a partnership we have with the Southern Co., about a $3 billion expansion project.

Mississippi Crossing is in the state of Mississippi, also over 200 miles of pipe and an expansion of our existing system there. Both of these projects are for power generation and industrial load [and] variations of that. These are needed utilities need them to get energy to their customers. This will provide additional energy redundance, for lack of a better word, or resiliency. You have these weather events that continue to happen across the country where you have it cold today and hot tomorrow or cold for a series of days and the power generation is peak. You need to have that additional supply for that.

So it's for the known and the unknowns that these projects are for. So to have that additional capacity in the region is going to make those states more resilient, more secure and also play an enormous role in the economic development for those states as these massive new energy hungry data centers, artificial intelligence, all of this. President Trump trying to bring manufacturing back to the state renaissance of U.S steel, bring these jobs home, whether it's Apple or Microsoft and Tesla, all of these things all require energy and that's what this build out of energy infrastructure is for. So those two projects have close to $5 billion of additional investment just in that region.

SS: That is major. Another project that has maybe not gotten as much hoopla as you would expect, Kinder Morgan is moving forward on the Trident interstate pipeline. It just seems to be a pipeline going around Houston. Could you maybe give a little bit more [detail] as to why that kind of project is going to be so important?

AF: Yes. Not a small local project. We're about 41.7 billion on that project investment and it's over 200 miles of pipe. And this is for LNG and for power generation. So as we've talked, Sandy, any projects we develop are for specific needs. And as we've talked about the Trident project and as the project now is in market, now is in the permitting stages, these projects tend to have others take a look at that project and say, ‘can we be part of that? Is there an expansion that some way we can take off of that?’ So I would fully say this project [could be] potentially expanding even further. But we know what we need now. We know what we're building now, and this project is an interstate project, which means it doesn't have the FERC [Federal Energy Regulatory Commission] apparatus because it's not interstate. So we're already moving quickly on the permitting stages on that project. Expect to begin construction either later this year or early next year and be in service a year later [2027]. So again, a major additional transportation project to get gas to the Port Arthur area in Texas, which is part of that whole LNG piece, but also for power generation and utility use along the way.

SS: Well, that sounds great. Thank you very much for coming out to visit us today, I appreciate it. Thanks for watching this video. This Sandy Segrist from Hart Energy.

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