PITTSBURGH—Alan Armstrong has concerns. The chairman and CEO of the Williams Cos. Inc. (NYSE: WMB) doesn’t want natural gas producers and midstream operators in the Marcellus-Utica region to get caught off guard by rising demand, left without sufficient infrastructure to meet it.

Setting the tone for the 2017 Marcellus-Utica Midstream Conference & Exhibition on Jan. 25, Armstrong warned the audience for his opening keynote address that “there is a lot of work ahead” for the industry.

“You’re going to hear today about the demand that is building up on the backs of low-price natural gas,” he said. “I think it may catch us a little bit by surprise in areas like [Marcellus-Utica].”

Hear more from Alan Armstrong on his Facebook Live interview at the Marcellus-Utica Midstream Conference on the Midstream Business Facebook page.

This might have been an early-morning jolt for some celebrating President Donald Trump’s executive order, one day earlier, to accelerate work on the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines. While optimism is indeed in order, Armstrong and other executives were on hand to remind midstream operators that it all still comes down to growing demand for natural gas and the industry’s ability to be ready to deliver it safely and efficiently.

“Several years ago, I spoke about getting large-scale NGL takeaway capacity here, and we’re still fighting that [lack of capacity],” he said. “We still haven’t solved that as an industry. We’re still waiting on getting some of that big infrastructure in place.”

He said the lack of NGL takeaway shifted much of the region’s drilling from rich gas to dry gas. More than 60% of the rigs in the Marcellus-Utica over the last year have been targeting dry gas, according to Armstrong.

“So we are excited about any and all infrastructure going out of the area, whether we are competing against it or not,” he said. ‘We are rooting for everyone’s pipeline, whether gas or NGL.”

And while it’s been an eventful year-and-half for Williams Cos., with “a lot of distraction and a lot of change,” according to Armstrong, the company has maintained its “tremendous exposure and investment in the Marcellus and Utica.” Williams made headlines for an on-again, off-again merger with Energy Transfer Equity.

Armstrong also pointed out that the company has maintained its focus on its Transco system—the largest interstate natural gas pipeline.

“By 2018, we will have doubled capacity on our Transco Pipeline, and that’s saying a lot when you’re starting with the largest pipeline,” he said, returning to his point about the importance of infrastructure in the region, which will be needed sooner rather than later.

And there is cause for urgency when it comes to building up takeaway capacity in the Marcellus-Utica, he said. “As gas prices come down, we are seeing more and more people become confident in being able to invest in natural gas,” he said. “We really don’t have much doubt about demand [growth]. What we are worried about is this area having the ability to respond.”

He, like many of the executives at the conference, is particularly concerned for the region simply because “Marcellus-Utica is really the only area that has the scale to meet the coming demand,” he said.

“You can’t sneak up on demand side. You’re talking about building LNG plants. You’re talking about building big power plants. You’re talking about 20-year commitments to downstream pipeline,” he said.

The basic infrastructure for supplying natural gas for the coming years is in place, he said. The key is to get it all connected and deliverable.

Armstrong showed that about 16 billion cubic feet per day of pipeline capacity is moving ahead, appearing well-supported from a contracting and regulatory perspectives.

“If I were giving this presentation in October [2016], I wouldn’t have had quite as much confidence as I do today in this infrastructure getting built in time,” he said. But there are still challenges.

“This region has the demand, but the one thing that could kill that demand is high gas prices caused by lack of infrastructure,” he said. “It’s extremely critical to--not just this region--but also the U.S., that we are able to get this infrastructure built.”

To get that infrastructure built, he said, the industry must better communicate natural gas’ importance to the nation, and emphasize the industry’s ability to meet the demand to benefit jobs, the environment and consumers, who often don’t understand what it means when infrastructure gets blocked.

“I think people are starting to understand that, and I think we’ll start to see the support turn our way a bit in that regard,” he added.

But, Armstrong advised, now is not the time to get too comfortable and assume these projects will be built.

“We can be excited about [executive order] announcements, but it’s not changing the opposition we have at the local level,” he said. “We’ve got to bring a voice. We can’t be heavy-handed about it. We can’t sit back. We have to talk about the importance of infrastructure to the nation.”

Len Vermillion can be reached at lvermillion@hartenergy.com.