What three-plus years behind the mic taught me about midstream, myths, and the radical middle.

I didn’t sign up to cohost a podcast because I needed another meeting on my calendar. I did it because midstream still gets talked about like a footnote, when it’s really the circulatory system that moves molecules and electrons from where they’re produced to where people live and work.

I’ve cohosted GPA Midstream’s Let’s Clear the Air Energy Podcast from the beginning — our first episode published in May 2023. The mission is straightforward: honest midstream conversations about affordability, reliability, and sustainability, and clear up the misconceptions that crowd out the facts. Since then, I’ve sat across from journalists, geologists, policy experts from both sides of the aisle, and operators who know exactly what breaks.

My favorite part of hosting is simple: on almost every episode, I would have kept talking for at least another hour. Every guest has been so passionate about their work, and that passion is a big part of why I’m optimistic about where energy is headed.

What surprised me most is this: underneath almost every argument, people want the same thing — solutions. The paths differ, but the destination is more energy. Here are six lessons that got me there.

1. Myths lose to specifics

Midstream spent decades building pipelines, plants, and storage most people never see. That invisibility felt like a feature until the public energy debate got louder and thinner on facts. When GPA Midstream President and CEO Joel Moxley joined the show, we talked about what operators already know, including the industry’s long history of removing carbon dioxide from natural gas, and how midstream has traditionally stayed under the radar.

The industry’s problem was never a lack of effort, excellence, or expertise. It was a lack of explanation. Hosting cured me of any leftover belief that anyone understands what we do. They don’t. If we don’t tell it straight, someone else will tell it sideways.

2. “Transition” without “addition” is incomplete

Our first interview was with journalist and author Robert Bryce, and the question on the table was energy transition versus energy addition. That framing stuck with me. Demand doesn’t wait for perfect plans. If we want reliable energy — and we do — we have to add new resources to the mix, not subtract today’s workhorses. It bears emphasis: history shows that new energy resources do not replace fuels previously in use — even when added at massive scale.

Hearing it tested by operators and outside critics in the same series made it sharper. The useful answer rarely sits at either extreme.

3. Affordability and reliability are part of the environmental story

Dr. Scott Tinker gave us a line I still repeat: “I don’t think we get to Net Zero emissions unless we begin to transition those in poverty.” Affordability isn’t in opposition to climate action. It’s a precondition for it. Later conversations, including Neel Brown of the Progressive Policy Institute on energy justice starting with affordability and Matthew Yglesias on pragmatic climate policy, came back to the same point from different starting places.

Blackouts and unaffordable bills don’t build trust for the next project. They erode it. Ambition without delivery is just a press release.

4. Permitting is not a side quest

The same constraint comes up episode after episode. Chad Whiteman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce walked us through the reality: about four and a half years to get a permit for infrastructure in the U.S., and then the litigation starts, under processes set by legislation passed 50 to 60 years ago.

You can care deeply about environmental review and still admit that outdated processes hold up the very infrastructure every side says it wants: transmission, pipelines, plants, carbon management, and manufacturing. Clearing the air means saying that plainly, without cartoon villains.

5. Most people want solutions, and the destination is more energy

This lesson snuck up on me. Our guests have come from industry, academia, journalism, progressive policy shops, business groups, and startups. They don’t agree on everything. But across hours of honest disagreement, I kept hearing the same thing underneath: people want solutions.

Season Three opened with AI, data centers, and what new load means for supply and for people’s bills. The numbers bear that out. In its 2025 Long-Term Reliability Assessment, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) projects that summer peak demand across the North American power system will rise by more than 224 GW over its 10-year assessment period. That’s 69% higher than the previous year’s 10-year projection of 132 GW, and NERC says new data centers for artificial intelligence and the digital economy account for most of the increase.

Here at home, the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Short-Term Energy Outlook (September 2026) expects U.S. electricity sales to reach a record 4,135 billion kilowatt hours in 2026, driven by data center development and increased manufacturing activity. EIA also forecasts the residential electricity price rising from 17.3 cents per kilowatt hour in 2025 to 18.2 cents in 2026.

Load growth doesn’t care about talking points, and neither do household budgets. If you’re still stuck in yesterday’s binary of fossil or clean, you’re not hearing what demand is asking for. The paths people propose are different. The outcome they need is the same: more energy, delivered affordably and reliably.

6. The next conversations belong in the radical middle

Dr. Tinker describes the “radical middle” this way: “a place that we can work together in the economics, the energy systems, the environmental impacts and compromise. We might be wrong on occasion, but we grow and learn. When we do that, we succeed.” The more episodes I host, the more I believe that’s where LCTA needs to go next. It isn’t mushy compromise. It’s a working space where operators, policymakers, advocates, and critics bring their best data and analyze the tradeoffs in good faith.

My goal for future episodes is to pull all sides into that middle. When people stop defending their lane and start working the problem together, more becomes possible: more projects built, more energy delivered, and more trust earned along the way.

What I’ll keep doing

My day job at SAMUEL EPC is commercial growth across engineering, fabrication, and construction. The podcast sharpens that work. You listen differently when your day job is delivering projects and your side job is asking why projects take so long and cost so much. It leaves me with less patience for fluff and more patience for honest disagreement.

It also keeps me optimistic. When almost every conversation ends with me wishing we had another hour, and every guest brings that much passion to the table, it’s hard not to believe the problems in front of us can be solved.

If you work in midstream or policy, or you’re just tired of energy arguments that skip over the pipes and plants, give Let’s Clear the Air a listen. Start with Robert Bryce on energy addition, Dr. Tinker on the radical middle, or our newer episodes on permitting and load growth. And if you think we’re missing a side of the argument, tell me. That’s what I want at the table next.

Listen and subscribe to the Let’s Clear the Air Energy Podcast: https://letscleartheairnow.org/energy-podcast/

Sources

North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), 2025 Long-Term Reliability Assessment (January 2026). https://www.nerc.com/globalassets/our-work/assessments/nerc_ltra_2025.pdf

U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), Short-Term Energy Outlook, September 2026 (released September 9, 2026). https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/steo/archives/sep26.pdf

Adam Murray is Chief Commercial Officer at SAMUEL EPC and has cohosted GPA Midstream’s Let’s Clear the Air podcast since its first episode in 2023.