Speaker 1:
From the library of the New York stock exchange at the corner of wall and broad streets in New York city, you're Inside the ICE house, our podcast from Intercontinental exchange on markets, leadership and vision and global business. The dream drivers that have made the NYSE an indispensable institution of global growth for over 225 years. Each week, we feature stories of those who hatch plans, create jobs and harness the engine of capitalism. Right here, right now at the NYSE and at ISIS exchanges and clearing houses around the world. And now welcome Inside the ICE house. Here's your host, Josh King of Intercontinental exchange.
Josh King:
This year, Intercontinental exchange celebrates its 20th anniversary. A journey that began with a simple, yet utterly disruptive goal of using technology to bring transparency, efficiency, and access to the energy markets. Today, those markets look vastly different than in 2000, possibly none more than natural gas. Global production has almost doubled over the past two decades. A result of the discovery of new reserves, particularly here in the United States and seemingly insatiable appetite for gas from Asia. As the cleanest fossil fuel, natural gas will also be a vital transitional energy source as the world moves to a future of lower carbon emissions. And today we're seeing the globalization of the fuel. Underpinned by new benchmarks in Europe and Asia. Here at Intercontinental exchange, just in European markets, we saw an 84% jump in Futures open interest last December compared to just one year earlier. The growth of the natural gas market is only possible with an infrastructure to safely and efficiently move it from the fields to buyers, which brings us to one of the great names listed on the New York stock exchange.
Josh King:
I'm talking about Williams, ticker symbol, WMB. Originally founded in 1908 as Williams Brothers. The company built some of America's first cross country pipelines, including the big inch pipeline that went through Longview, Texas. The hometown of Scott Hill, ISIS owned chief financial officer on its way to the port of New York and New Jersey to help fuel the Allies's victory in World War II. Check out our episode number 105 with Scott, for more on that pipeline. And today Williams handles 30% of the natural gas in the country with its network of pipelines and processing operations across the continent.
Josh King:
Williams's focus on gas was part of a transformation away from other fuels and non-core business under CEO, Alan Armstrong. A longtime executive appointed to the top job in 2011. Alan recently sat down with my colleague, Betty Liu for an episode of her show, Slice. Part of the ICE insights platform. Betty's conversation with Alan was condensed for the Slice broadcast, but today we're pleased to bring you their exchange in its entirety. The next voice you hear after the break will be Betty's. Her talk with Williams CEO, Alan Armstrong on the challenges facing the energy sector, the role of technology in improving, not just production, but safety and what it takes to lead an evolving company. That's all right after this.
Speaker 3:
And now a word from Calvin Choi, CEO of AMDT. NYSE Ticker, HKIB.
Calvin Choi:
We are the first Hong Kong independent investment bank. To list here. Is so unique coming here to list because we want to embrace internationalization. We want to go global. This is a global change. We want to embrace global connectivity. A is adventure, M is actually mission, T is actually teamwork, D is the destination. NYSE is our destination. AMTD now lists on the New York Stock Exchange.
Betty Liu:
So let's talk first, a little bit about your leadership. What I read in your bio, which I think is pretty interesting is that you started at Williams as an engineer, and you worked your way up. You became president and CEO back in 2011. So how have you been able to maintain that competitive edge?
Alan Armstrong:
Yeah, great question. I'd say the thing that keeps me the most motivated is having really hard charging people around me and having a really good team that is constantly pushing you and is well being excited to work with a team that's successful as well. So I would say, earlier in my career, my thought process around how to do things well was to do it all yourself, whatever can be done, I can do it better.
Betty Liu:
Like a young person
Alan Armstrong:
Yeah, exactly. Right. And so, but I would say as I've had the opportunity to work at Williams and mature, there were a lot of people I saw that were a lot smarter than I will ever be and ever was and realize they're really smart, but they're not getting people to come with them. And so they're not actually moving the whole organization in a way that's beneficial to the whole organization. And I can't tell you how many times I've had to have that conversation, but somebody, one of my prior bosses kind of had a very polite version of that conversation with me, frankly, and really made me start thinking about how I needed to bring people along rather than just be right.
Betty Liu:
What did he say?
Alan Armstrong:
He just said, "You know, I can't think of a time that you're not right, but that doesn't really do anything for a bottom line for you just to be right. Having everybody come along with that direction is what makes us successful." And he is spot on. And so I would tell you, that's been a really important lesson for me in my career. And today I get to work with such a great and energized team that is just very passionate, very dedicated about doing the right thing.
Alan Armstrong:
And I think a team having the same values around them so that they're really trusting of each other and that they're aligned in their values really allows you to work together well and have trust within the team. And so I'd say that's people say, well, this person's a perfect leader, that person's perfect leader. The truth is that leaders are good in very different situations. In other words, some leadership style is perfect. If you're having to come out of a crisis, some leadership style is great at growing a business really, really fast. And so it takes all kinds, but as a team, really leveraging off the different strengths around a team for the different scenarios is really the right way to run the business.
Betty Liu:
How would you describe your leadership style?
Alan Armstrong:
I would say I really like to let people know that I am really supportive of them being successful. And I wouldn't say I've always been like that, but I would say that's become really clear to me is that making people understand, we have a broad intent here and our intent should be to drive this whole organization forward. It shouldn't be about anyone, individual, including ourselves. It really should be about the whole organization. And the one thing I really love about the Williams culture that has really attracted me to it and has allowed me to prosper is I have seen and have had people that kind of put themselves first, ahead of the organization, get completely chewed up by that. And I think the organization really appreciates leaders that put the organization first, even when there's tough, personal decisions around personnel and so forth. We always have to really put the organization first. And so that's a culture within Williams. That's very strong and very persuasive.
Betty Liu:
Williams has a great back background, a very humble background with the Williams brothers having started the company. How do you keep reinforcing that culture?
Alan Armstrong:
Well, it was a pretty simple culture, right? It was a job done well on time. That was their motto. So pretty simple. But, I would say, I had the real fortune of getting to work around both Joe Williams and John Williams in my career. And they were great leaders, very different leaders, but great leaders in their own right. And they were pretty fearless about what all the other noise was going on around them. They were very focused on creating shareholder value and not getting swayed by the latest fads or the latest short term thinking. But they were truly fearless. And, I can remember several times where when John Williams's, he's passed away now, but when he was alive and I got to have lunch with him about once a month and he would say, how could this possibly be bothering you? It's not that big a deal. And in his mind-
Betty Liu:
So that taught you that fearlessness.
Alan Armstrong:
Well, no way would I compare myself to John Williams in terms of fearlessness, but it's certainly something I admire. So I would say that's something that's been important about Williams is very enduring and pretty fearless about doing what they think is the right long term thing to do despite criticisms and from people that are not fully aware of the facts and the issues.
Betty Liu:
Alan, I love that word. Fearless. That's a terrific word. I'm curious, just in your own career history, has there been a time where you've taken that word and really applied it to a decision that you had to make?
Alan Armstrong:
Yeah, there's been several. I don't really want to talk about them, but there's been a lot of times. And I think when I've had those situations, I've been fortunate enough to have good leadership around me and good confidants around me to help push us through some of those decisions. And so I probably handled it a lot different than John Williams would've but, nevertheless, I think it's come from having good support and good team around you do that.
Betty Liu:
Yeah. Well, speaking about the team and the workforce, you flip that, there's a lot of concern or fear among companies around disruption and how do you keep your workforce nimble? So I'm kind of curious how you ensure as you want this culture at the company to stay intact, how do you make sure that your workforce is also nimble and that they're working with this disruptive industry ... It's disruption in the industry, but also just around the world, period.
Alan Armstrong:
Right. Well, I think, keeping a really clear compass for people and having great certainty about what we are trying to accomplish and that ultimately this will create shareholder value. Here's how we're going to do this. And we have a lot of important measures that we use internally that show our progress. So we're not looking at bigger, broader measures. We're looking at very focused measures about what we're trying to accomplish and when we can point to those and said, we said, we were going to do this, and we are doing this. We're being very successful on this. And we should all be excited about that. So I think keeping visible, transparent measures in front of people that can show we are progressing. We are making progress really helps people a lot. As opposed to thinking, is this ever going to work?
Betty Liu:
Like, where am I? Right, yes.
Alan Armstrong:
Is this ever going to work? Are we making progress? Are we not? And so I think that's a really important thing to give the organization transparency and visibility to what we are accomplishing when we set those goals.
Betty Liu:
Yeah. Because if you can measure it, you can also change as well. And, as you say, you mark the progress and you can see, okay, we need to pivot this way, or that way. And speaking about change. So, the energy markets are going through a transition, you're right in the middle of that, Williams has grown so successfully, your 30% market share in the natural gas market. But as you know, we're seeing cold decline, renewable energy sources are increasing. Where does Williams fit in all of that?
Alan Armstrong:
Yeah, that's a great question. Well, first of all, if you look at the balance of energy around the world, and there's some really interesting studies out there, and I think it's really important that we, as an energy industry and as scientists broader looking at climate, really start to look at practical solutions that we can actually execute on. It seems like things have become very polarized to where people are making big, big statements about what we can accomplish on one hand, without having the facts to support that. And on the other hand, people have perceived and maybe rightfully so, have perceived the energy industry to just have their head in the sand and not being willing to deal with the issue. I think what we're seeing today is that those things are coming together pretty quickly where the energy industry is really starting to come to the middle and say, there are a lot of great things we can do to reduce carbon emissions.
Alan Armstrong:
If we really put science to work and we really put a master plan in place and start to work towards those. And so I'm really encouraged to see that. And I think that gas, getting back to your question, natural gas and renewables working together is a very powerful solution, not just for the US, but for the globe. The story here in the US is very unique. We've reduced our carbon emissions by 17% over the last about 13 years. And we've lowered people's price that they pay for gas at their home, right by 35% at the same time. There's very few countries that can say they both lowered people's utility bills and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. And so it is powerful to bring those two together. And the fact is that we think renewables, it's great that we've invested so much in technology here in the US to develop our renewables.
Alan Armstrong:
I think that's very valuable to us and to the world. But the fact is, if you look even at dramatic rates of increase in renewables, it is starting from such a small place. And there's a lot of things that it really can't penetrate very well. So for instance, today, if you look at the amount of energy that is consumed at the end user level, so this is where it actually-
Betty Liu:
At the consumer level.
Alan Armstrong:
At the consumer level. That is about 621 quadrillion BTUs in 2018. So keep that in mind for just a moment. 20% of that in use energy consumption, 20% came from electricity. Okay. So everybody thinks about electricity as being the major place energy that the consumer consumes, but in reality, it's only 20% of what we consume. And of that 20%, so I've got a pie chart here, 20%. Now off to the edge of that. So only 7%-
Betty Liu:
Of that 20%.
Alan Armstrong:
Of that 20% is coming from wind and solar. Now, when you look at the amount of energy growth at that consumer level, as the less fortunate and less developed countries of the world continue to really pine for and demand better, higher styles of living, that is driving a tremendous growth in energy consumption in forecast over the next 25 years. And if you look at that growth rate, even if we do everything we possibly can do on renewables, it really has a hard time denting that overall energy consumption because energy consumption is growing so fast. And that slice of renewables is really slow. So I don't mean to be sounding discouraging to our efforts there at all. In fact, and I think we're doing a lot of great things there, but the truth is we have to set and look at the facts like-
Betty Liu:
Reality
Alan Armstrong:
Energy is physics and physics has very hard facts around it. And we have to really take a look at that, both from the energy sector side, which I really think you're starting to see a big groundswell movement coming from the major energy companies, really starting to say, Hey, we can help solve these problems. We are, here's what we're doing. And they are very genuine about it. So I get to work with a lot of those folks. I helped chair the national petroleum council study this year on infrastructure. And that study brought together a lot of voices around climate change and carbon and so forth. But it was very obvious to me that the majors are really taking this issue on with a vengeance. They really want to be productive and help. And so I think while to date, we've been very, very polarized on that issue, I think there's a real opportunity right now for the NGOs and the very hard environmentalists to come together.
Alan Armstrong:
And you're starting to see glimmers of that. There are some very reasonable and practical ... But that's what we've got to get to, to help solve the problem. We've got to start identifying fact based solutions and get after developing those. Natural gas, when talk about energy use around the world, natural gas can be really powerful in the immediate term. So I'm not saying that forever, because forever's a long, long time. But in the immediate term, if we really think about the present value of emissions reduction, which is the way we ought to think about it, because it's building on us as we speak. And if we really are urgent about getting that down, there is anything and everything we can do right now to reduce emissions, we ought be grabbing.
Betty Liu:
Right. It's the practicality of it. I think that was the key word, is what can we do now? And I think natural gas is a great solution to that question and just a quick note on that, we see that on our own exchanges. I mean, LNG futures a couple of years ago, trading was at nothing. And now they're at record volumes and all of that is because of what you say, which is countries, governments, are looking for ways to reduce their carbon emissions. And a lot of that trading obviously is directed towards powering Asia, right? Powering the future there. And I'm kind of curious, your views on that, on gas consumption around the world, but also in particular, I mean it's powering these developing countries.
Alan Armstrong:
Absolutely. A lot of the big changes in energy are going to come from countries like China. Who's done a great job by the way of very quickly going from coal to natural gas. Their rate of increase in natural gas consumption is really impressive. So you can say a lot of things about China, but when they say-
Betty Liu:
Put their mind to it.
Alan Armstrong:
When they say student body left, they mean it. And they do it. And so I would say they've made a lot of really dramatic increase on that front. But, now you're going to see other countries sitting right behind that, like India. And those big population centers that have not had the benefit of low cost, natural gas, you're going to start seeing that. And if you look at the amount, the kind of energy that's being burnt today for heating and cooking in those areas, it's solid fuels and you hear the term biomass and it makes it sound modern and sexy, but it's not. It's coal, it's charcoal, it's animal dung, it's firewood and crop waste. I mean, that's really what-
Betty Liu:
It's just another way of saying the same thing. Yeah.
Alan Armstrong:
Right. And so that's what's being burned there that is both really high in carbon content and it also comes with a lot of fine particulate that gets distributed around. And so if you look at the amount of lung disease that exist in a lot of those areas and respiratory problems, it's because of that kind of use of fuel. So natural gas can come into those areas and dramatically improve people's lives very quickly in health, very quickly in those areas. And that's why, and I think this is the thing that always have to come to back to fundamentals when you think about investing as well. And today natural gas is less than a fourth of the price of crude oil. And you think about, this gas is already ready to go, ready to burn as it is. Crude oil still has to be refined into further products, but even then on an MMBTU basis, or on a British thermal unit basis, gas is less than a fourth of the price of oil. So if you were making a choice about what to grow your economy on, what would you do there?
Betty Liu:
It would seem very logical.
Alan Armstrong:
And that's why you're seeing places like Mexico very quickly import a lot of US natural gas, because what they're doing is they're taking diesel, jet fuels and things that they can sell at a higher price into the broad global market. They can now sell that rather than consuming it for power generation. And so they're now substituting US natural gas. And then that allows them to export higher value products like oil and diesel.
Betty Liu:
Right. I think I saw some numbers. They're now importing 60% of their energy consumption is now natural gas along those lines.
Alan Armstrong:
And things about the savings to the country. If they can import that for that kind of cost level. And they can sell their liquid products for much higher. So very valuable opportunity. And the US is blessed with not only an abundance of gas reserves here that are low cost. But as well, and this is the thing that really frustrates me sometime is that the technology and the ingenuity and the reliance on capitalism, that the independent producers here in the US have brought to bring us very, very low cost gas that has propelled our economy a lot more than most people know.
Alan Armstrong:
It's brought back manufacturing because we have low cost energy sources. It's brought back the petrochemical industry because of the natural gas liquids that come off of that. And it is all on the backs of these independent producers that constantly get, politically are in the penalty box. But in reality, they're the ones that have really helped drive our economy. And so the US is extremely well positioned, not just from a resource base, but from a capability standpoint. And it's a huge lift now to the US and in the future to the globe.
Betty Liu:
You speak about technology. There's also technology that's allowing us to use renewable natural gas. So what is that about?
Alan Armstrong:
So if you think about the emergence of renewables, always try to use west Texas as an example, if I've got a wind turbine generating power in as one turbine in west Texas, the ability for that one turbine to meet up with the load requirement, in the air's pretty good, right? Because I'm only got one wind turbine. And so there's almost always going to be a load available for it from factory power. If all of a sudden I've got 10,000 wind turbines. Now the ability for that, the production of wind energy to coincide with the need for demand in the local area starts to run out. Right? So now I've got excess power available a lot of the time. So what do you do with that excess power? Well, one of the things you can do with that excess power is generate hydrogen from air.
Alan Armstrong:
And so now it's effectively a way of storing energy. So it's not very cost effective right now, but that doesn't mean it can't be in the future. And you can then turn around with a lot of the infrastructure that we already have in the US. The current infrastructure, like Williams operates, we can't take in a full load of that pure hydrogen, but we can supplement our natural gas with that hydrogen and move it around the country where we already have the infrastructure to help do that. So at the end of the day, I don't see it as a for purpose, a generation of renewable natural gas, but I do see it as something that can help take excess power from wind and solar when, and store it effectively in terms of putting it in the form of hydrogen. And then we can store it underground and just like we do natural gas and have it ready for market.
Betty Liu:
You put out a sustainability report earlier this year and it was your first one. So I'm kind of curious why you decided to do this and what that means for Williams.
Alan Armstrong:
It's a great question. Well, first of all, we used to, when we had an EMP company back in 2010, we spun out our EMP company at the first part of 2012. And we used to actually do one then because the EMP companies were kind of the target of a lot of those issues. When we sold off or spun off our EMP company, we didn't really see the attention on the issue, we were just a sleepy old pipeline company and nobody paid attention to us. And well, those times have changed obviously. And so, we do want to talk about not only what we are doing, but what we can do and what the opportunities are in the future force. So since 2012, as an example, we have reduced the methane emissions from our operations by 53%. And so that's the same in terms of the total emissions reductions that we've done during that period. Is the same as taking 7 million gasoline powered vehicles off the road.
Alan Armstrong:
So we have a lot of opportunity to reduce, and we're not the only ones. The whole industry has great opportunity to reduce emissions. We have a project that we are working on right now and working with our customers to make sure that they support it, which would reduce our emissions from our compressor station. So if you think about moving natural gas around the country, it takes a lot of big compressor engines to move that. And those are typically natural gas fired. And so you have emissions. A lot of our equipment was really old technology. And so we're now putting in with very modern technology. We can reduce our emissions by 72%. Wow. On the nation's largest pipeline. So we have a lot of opportunity and we're going after that.
Betty Liu:
And as you say, the whole industry is really moving towards that.
Alan Armstrong:
Absolutely, there's a tremendous opportunity on that front. And so for us, we were already doing a lot of this, but that the ESG report really gave us a nice vehicle to talk about what we're doing. I would tell you the Oklahoma attitude is, I'll do the right thing. I don't need to tell you I'm doing the right thing, but in reality in today's time, I think we do need to talk about, because if we don't talk, people are assuming the worst. And so we do need to communicate on this front.
Betty Liu:
Before we get to ESG, just, I'm kind of curious your opinion about going to become a net zero carbon emitter. What are your thoughts on that? Because you see some companies selecting that-
Alan Armstrong:
I see so many different versions of that. I frankly, am not sure what it means just by the way. Because I've seen so many people use it and then I look at what they're doing and I think, well, that's not really net zero.
Betty Liu:
That's not really net zero.
Alan Armstrong:
Yeah. So, I would say though, again, thinking about it very practically, there are tremendous amount of opportunity to reduce emissions, but we shouldn't spend money that could be better utilized in going after a extremely low goal when there are a lot of really low hanging fruit that we can go grab right here, right now-
Betty Liu:
That can make a bigger impact.
Alan Armstrong:
They can make a much bigger impact, and that's what we really need to be studying. Because if you said you wanted to go to an unlimited budget model, you could do whatever you wanted to, but eventually that's going to cost somebody. It's going to cost consumer. Typically, almost always winds up on the consumer's back when that approach is taken. And so the truth is how do we make sure that our economy stays reliable and we really invest those dollars for carbon reduction at the most important, most potent opportunities that exist out there.
Betty Liu:
Let's switch on the topic of ESG. Are you hearing more from your investors around topics related to ESG and whether you're meeting standards, are you hearing more, are those coming up?
Alan Armstrong:
Yeah, I would say there's a lot of different facets to this and it's almost impossible to say what all of our, and obviously there's a wide spectrum of perspective on this. But I would say there's a very practical level that says we really want to know is there risk to the sustainability of your business model. Which is important. We want to make sure that you're investing adequately to keep your facility safe, which is sustainability. And we want to make sure now everybody, when you hear ESG, everybody immediately jumps to the E right? Around environmental. But in reality, there's social issues, which for us reflects very much on safety and community safety and then there's governance, which has to do mostly within the boardroom. And I would tell you, we've always, I think, done an exceptional job on that. But the environmental side that's out there, the investors are wanting to know that you do not have your head in the sand. That you're up, you're looking for the opportunities, you're looking for ways to grow your business in a way that is congruent with the concern over environmental responsibility.
Alan Armstrong:
And so there are some that make it a front and center issue. There are others that it still feels like it's a little bit of a sideline issue. Quite frankly, but I would say there's not very many large institutional investors that that isn't a topic. Whether it drives their investment decision or not, is very difficult for us to predict at this point.
Betty Liu:
Do you share though, other companies frustrations around the standards and the measurements?
Alan Armstrong:
Oh yeah. And especially in our industry.
Betty Liu:
I mean, you were kind of in the spotlight.
Alan Armstrong:
There and there is so much opportunity around this, and so when we decided to take ESG on at the first part of last year and then really got our act together, as we started to develop our ESG document this year. We said, we want to take it on in two fronts. One, we want to go ahead and announce what we are doing and describe what we are doing, because there's a lot of great things we're doing and we want to get those stats out there. We want to go ahead and file for the carbon disclosure project. So people know we're really serious about holding ourselves accountable to that.
Alan Armstrong:
But then secondly, which I would tell you is a much harder path, is we want to be an industry leader in helping have important metrics around ESG because frankly, a lot of the things that we're getting measured on are not the right measurements. And, it's a new environment. There's all kinds of people trying to make their stake as Raiders in that space. But we think there's some really intelligent ways to get at that. And I would say I'm very impressed with the industry leadership right now who really do want to see some important meaningful metrics out there because they don't like the idea of having these very arbitrary measures out there. I could win on that, but long term, that's not really-
Betty Liu:
What is that really saying?
Alan Armstrong:
Right. So, I think, the industry really needs to step up and start to speak through its trade associations and so forth with, Hey, here are the things you really should be measuring that are a balance measure of our business.
Betty Liu:
Speaking about the industry, what do you think is the, if you had to pick one, the most transformative technology affecting your industry?
Alan Armstrong:
I think for us, the one I'm probably most excited about is years ago, back in 2012, we started using infrared cameras in our big facilities, big aboveground plant and facilities to look for hydrocarbon emissions. And so you can see those through infrared cameras that you could be standing right next to a leak and you could not detect it at all. But with those cameras, you can see it. And we actually started it. We were working with EDF, the environmental defense fund on a project out in the Rockies to determine what the level of emissions were coming from, oil and gas production and the processing and gas gathering operations, which we do out in the Rockies. And so we started it really with, Colorado state university was actually conducting the study in and around our facilities. But all of a sudden we realize, wow, the leaks aren't as high as what the EPA thought they were around these facilities in our case.
Alan Armstrong:
But there's leaks coming from places we did not know about. And from a safety standpoint, we're concerned about it. So we started deploying that technology around all of our facilities, really for the benefit of safety and it's resulted in, between that and changing the way we operate our pipeline systems today in terms of when we have to evacuate the pipelines for maintenance, our emissions from 2012 are down 53%. And so that technology has been front and center in helping us identify that. And at first nobody was making us do it. We did this voluntarily with EDF and this is not a regulatory requirement that we do this, but it's become really powerful tool for us to use. And so another thing that we do is we use LIDAR, which is from either drones or aerial surveillance to survey our pipeline routes.
Alan Armstrong:
And we can detect minute movements in the soil around our pipeline, which would indicate either a leak or the ground shifting, which could lead to a leak in a pipeline or even a rupture of the pipeline. And that's an amazing amount of data. If you think about surveying thousands and thousands of miles of the ground that's covering these pipelines, it's an amazing amount of data. And so some of the big institutions that do data analytics have come to us and said, do you realize you guys have some of the largest data bases of anybody?
Alan Armstrong:
But that's what we do use that for. We also have the technology today for internal inspection on pipelines. So making sure our pipelines are safe and the integrity is there. That is probably in the last five years has just moved light years in terms of our ability to detect potential problems, even to be able to predict problems in the future on our pipeline. So, I would say most of the technology that we're excited about is either driving reliability of maintenance or it's driving a safety on our systems. And that is for us, if we're not safe, we shouldn't be in the business at all. And so that's kind of where we start.
Betty Liu:
I'm just curious, Alan, before we go, personally for you, what technology is transforming your life or what are you most excited about?
Alan Armstrong:
I'm very impressed with what's going on in the data analytics. I mean, if you start thinking about the ability to examine and predict where we are, we all think our minds are great, but compared to what can be done with that analytics. It's pretty amazing. The kind of things that are coming and the predictions that are coming out of that, both in the oil and gas industry, both finding oil and gas, as well as the use of natural gas and the efficiency and how we can use gas more efficiently.
Alan Armstrong:
So data analytics, I think, is been used very well upstream in our industry and it's getting better and better and a lot of interesting things going on there, but applying that to our lives and our business on the downstream side, you'll hear something and people will say, well, we determine this because the data analytics and you think how did you do that? And then you kind of get into it and understand, and you go, well, yeah, that's simple. A lot of it is very common sense, but we just haven't had the computing power and the path to be able to run that much math. So anyway, I'm really amazed with that. My youngest daughter has told me that she was going to go from being an art management student to a data analytic student. And I was like, oh, I'm so excited.
Betty Liu:
You're like the future.
Alan Armstrong:
So as much as I love art, but anyway, so I was-
Betty Liu:
But how about for you personally though, has anything transformed? Feel like your life has gotten much better with a piece of technology or anything has made you more efficient or productive yourself?
Alan Armstrong:
I mean, the data that I have on my desk and on my phone today about our business operations.
Betty Liu:
Oh, just on your phone.
Alan Armstrong:
It's unbelievable how much information I can go access right here right now, that I used to have to come all the way up through food chain and eventually a report got filed. And three weeks later somebody would tell me the bad news. Today, it's like exactly right here right now.
Betty Liu:
It's almost in real time.
Alan Armstrong:
And it's also taken a lot of effort out of the company in terms of the administrative effort of informing when you can just have that. And so nobody even manages that. We have a multitude of daily reports that get generated without anybody touching any of it. And it'll point out anomalies for us. Like if you want to say, well, show me something that is out of the one standard deviation about any of our operations. Just immediately identify that. So it's pretty easy to use data today if you try. I think we've just gotten so used to it. We don't even think about how far we've come in that regard.
Betty Liu:
Right. We've taken it for granted in some ways, but we're also benefiting from it. Alan. Thank you so much for joining me. Thank you. That was fantastic.
Alan Armstrong:
Yeah. Thank you very much, Betty.
Josh King:
Thanks so much for joining us inside the ICE house for special uncut recording from the Slice episode with Williams's CEO Alan Armstrong, which appeared on Cheddar and as part of Intercontinental Exchange's insights platform that can be found at wwdottheice.com slash insights. If you like what you heard, please rate us on iTunes so other folks know where to find us. And if you've got a comment or question you'd like one of our experts to tackle on a future show, email us at icehouse at theice.com or tweet us at icehouse podcast. Our show is produced by Pete Ash with production assistance from Ken Abel and Steven [Romanchik. I'm Josh king, your host signing off in the library of the New York stock exchange. Thanks for listening. Talk to you next week.
Speaker 1:
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