Natural Gas: Fueling the Moment
“The theme of this year’s financial forum: natural gas is fueling the moment,” declared AGA VP, Membership and Strategic Development Edith Naegele at AGA’s 2025 Financial Forum in Marco Island last week. The financial experts, investors, and industry professionals in attendance were clearly in agreement on the strong position of natural gas utilities.
A roundtable discussion between AGA President and CEO Karen Harbert, NARUC President Tricia Pridemore, and AGA Chair of the Board and CEO of NiSource Lloyd Yates focused on the indispensable nature of natural gas to the American energy system, paths forward for and the value of improving state and federal level permitting, and the strong future of the natural gas system.
“Energy is nearly 7% of GDP, but it impacts 100%,” said Lloyd Yates. “Energy flows through everything. There can be no economic expansion unless there is expansion of our energy infrastructure.”
Former United States Trade Representative Susan Schwab gave a keynote address on the current regulatory and investment climate in the United States.
“Deregulation is the moneyshot in terms of promoting growth,” said Schwab. “It’s the NIMBY side of regulations, the permitting process. Some of the job creation by virtue of state, local municipal permitting and restrictions on say the trades. If you’re talking about building pipelines, you want more people to be able to deliver on that.”
AGA’s Financial Forum provides a unique opportunity for energy industry executives, security analysts, portfolio managers, rating agencies and bankers to meet for two days to evaluate the outlook for the energy industry and individual companies.
The need for permitting reform to allow America to build was a major theme of the event. AGA experts including AGA’s VP, Energy Markets, Analysis and Standards Richard Meyer, AGA Managing Director, Energy Analysis Juan Alvarado, AGA Chief Regulatory Counsel, Energy Matt Agen presented on the state of American energy infrastructure, the financial climate natural gas utilities are operating in, and the unique opportunities for both stability and growth that natural gas utilities offer to investors.
“According to Black Rock CEO Larry Fink, the world is looking at a $68 trillion infrastructure boom between now and 2040,” said Richard Meyer. “That’s the equivalent of building the entire Interstate highway system, plus the entire Transcontinental Railroad, start to finish, every six weeks for the next fifteen years.”
This surging infrastructure boom for everything from data centers to advanced manufacturing offers major opportunities to investors in utility infrastructure and creates significant incentive for Congress, states, and regulatory agencies to update a moribund permitting process which can add up to a decade to critical energy infrastructure projects.