Skip Horvath will wrap up 25 years as a major official in Washington's oil and gas associations when he retires as president of the Natural Gas Supply Association later this year. Horvath was chief operating officer at the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, where he worked 10 years, when he joined NGSA as its president in 1999.
That means he can appreciate how much things have changed in Washington for gas in a quarter century—and not just because the US gas supply outlook moved from scarcity to abundance with increased use of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling in the past 10 years.
"The approach to lobbying changed," he told OGJ on Jan. 6. "Three-martini lunches already were passe when I started. There used to be quiet whispers. Now, we try to be more transparent. You have to be consistent in what you say, both in public and in private."
Lobbyists cooperate more now, in marked contrast to Congress, Horvath said. "In the House, there's been a thirtyfold decrease in willingness to work with people you don't agree with," he noted. The number of moderates there fell from 344 members in 1982 to 11 in 2013, according to a Mehlman Vogel Castagnetti analysis for National Journal, which he cited.
Horvath said this lack of a political legislative middle in the US has occurred twice before—just prior to the Civil and Revolutionary Wars. This one clearly is the product of gerrymandered House districts designed to protect the incumbent, but unwittingly exposing him or her to extreme interests prior to each nomination.
Hopefully, self-correcting
"Republicans seem to be realizing now that the people they're electing don't always represent the party's interests," Horvath said. "It happened previously with the Democrats. Hopefully, it's a self-correcting mechanism."
Gas industry associations, meanwhile, moved from confrontation to cooperation, partly through the Natural Gas Council, which Horvath helped establish in 1990. "People call each other up," he said. "We tend to negotiate before going to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Instead of running to Mom and Dad, we try to work it out among ourselves first."
He expects this to be crucial if US gas production grows three times as quickly from 2012 to 2020 as it did from 1987 to 2012, as NGSA's most recent forecast suggests. "That's extraordinary," Horvath said. "We'll need infrastructure more quickly than before. FERC will face challenges, but I think it can respond."
His successor will be Dena E. Wiggins, a partner at Ballard Spahr who leads the Process Gas Consumers Group, a trade association representing gas customers. Her election by NGSA's board was announced on Jan. 7.
