Williams is strategically growing its business and exceeding financial objectives, while keeping up with peak day demand and fast-moving interest from data centers, President and CEO Alan Armstrong told analysts during a call about 2024 earnings.

“The strong natural gas fundamentals have us positioned to potentially exceed our long-term earnings growth objectives over the next five years as we gain clear line of sight to the impacts of LNG exports, coal-to-gas switching particularly in the west and industrial reshoring,” he said. “And we are using our skill sets to help solve demand for a whole new customer segment that is looking for highly reliable, fast-to-market and fast-following power generation.”

Armstrong noted “back-to-back-to-back all-time peak days” this winter, as Williams’ Transco system experienced unprecedented demand for natural gas and peak capacity.

“In fact, 17 of the 20 highest-volume days on Transco happened just this winter,” he said, “and it wasn’t just due to cold weather, it was from a combination of heating, power generation loads and LNG exports along the Transco corridor.”

“The demands that we’re seeing on our systems right now are really impressive.” Armstrong said later in an interview with CNBC Money Movers. “We saw the largest ever pull on our Transco system over the month of January, exceeding the prior demand by 10% just in that one month.”

Williams growth has been driven by project execution, where in the past four years, 17 large scale projects were put in service, with an additional 14 projects in execution today.

“In December, we brought on the Southside Reliability Enhancement expansion project in Virginia and for the sake of our customers and the consumers in these areas, it’s a good thing we did as both our Regional Energy Access expansion and SRE are running at full contracted capacity despite the opposition claiming they weren’t necessary,” Armstrong said.

“The irony is that even though the opposition has been motivated by greenhouse gas emission concerns, these expansions have been key in reducing emissions in the area by avoiding fuel switching to oil or coal.”

Armstrong also noted that under the Trump administration and a Republican Congress, the U.S. is seeing changes in energy policy aimed at bolstering energy independence and economic growth.

“This policy shift underscores the importance of our country’s strategic initiatives and positions the U.S. to take full advantage of the evolving energy landscape,” he said.

“However, to fully realize our potential and maintain our leadership position as a country, we have to be able to unlock some of our nation’s largest natural gas resources in places like the Marcellus and the Utica. With the support of the administration and potential permitting reform, Williams stands ready both to help solve this problem and be a major beneficiary of it.”

Read the press release about Williams fourth-quarter and full year 2024 results here.