On the desk today · The Williams Companies
One pipeline runs 9,600 miles from Texas to New York. Every molecule pays a toll.
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The Pipe That Heats
The Eastern Seaboard
In 1908, two brothers named Miller and David Williams started a construction business in Fort Smith, Arkansas. They dug ditches. They laid pipe. They moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, around 1918 and started building pipelines for the booming oil and gas industry. They didn't produce the oil. They didn't sell the gas. They built the road it traveled on — and eventually, they kept it.
One hundred and eighteen years later, the company those brothers founded owns over 32,000 miles of pipeline across 24 states and the Gulf of Mexico. It operates 35 natural gas processing facilities, 9 fractionation plants, and 423 billion cubic feet of natural gas storage. But the crown jewel — the asset that makes everything else work — is a single pipeline called Transco.
I turned on my stove last Tuesday. Gas flame, blue and steady. I didn't think about where the gas came from. But it came from somewhere — a well in Texas or Louisiana, processed at a plant along the Gulf Coast, compressed into a pipeline, and pushed 9,600 miles north through Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and into my kitchen. That pipeline — the Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line, known as Transco — is the largest-volume natural gas pipeline system in the United States. Williams owns it.
Most people think of natural gas as something that just shows up. You flip the switch on the stove. You set the thermostat. The gas arrives. But between the wellhead and your burner sits a physical pipe — buried underground, crossing rivers, running under highways, climbing through mountain passes — that carries the molecule from where it was produced to where it's consumed. Transco is that pipe for the entire Eastern Seaboard.
Miller Williams remained president of the company until 1971 and CEO until 1979. Over the decades, Williams expanded from construction into ownership — building pipelines and then keeping them, collecting the tariff on every unit of gas that flows through. In 1966, it bought the Great Lakes Pipeline Company for $287 million — at the time, the largest petroleum products pipeline in America.
In fiscal 2025, Williams reported $2.62 billion in net income — up 18% from the year before. Adjusted EBITDA hit a record $7.75 billion, up 9%. Cash flow from operations reached $5.9 billion, up 19%. The company raised its dividend to $2.10 per share for 2026 — the 52nd consecutive year of quarterly dividend payments, a streak unbroken since 1974. Dividend coverage was 2.37 times — meaning Williams earned $2.37 for every $1.00 it distributed. Contracted transmission capacity had already reached a record 33.4 billion cubic feet per day by the end of 2024 — and expansion projects throughout 2025 added more.
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That record $7.75 billion in adjusted EBITDA tells you something critical: the demand for natural gas on the Eastern Seaboard isn't declining. Power plants are converting from coal to gas. Data centers — the ones powering AI and cloud computing — need enormous amounts of electricity, and natural gas is the bridge fuel that runs 24 hours a day when solar and wind cannot. In the first quarter of 2025, Williams announced Transco's Power Express expansion — a 950 million cubic feet per day project to serve the power-hungry Virginia market by 2030. In the second quarter, Transco and Gulfstream achieved all-time records for summer natural gas volumes. The pipe is full. The demand is growing. And there is no second pipe.
The stickiness is physical and regulatory. Transco is regulated by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Utilities, power generators, and industrial customers sign long-term contracts — often 10 to 20 years — that guarantee them capacity on the pipeline at a tariff rate set through regulatory proceedings. Those contracts don't expire on a whim. And building a competing interstate pipeline takes a decade of permitting, environmental review, and construction. Nobody is building a second Transco. The infrastructure that exists is the infrastructure that will exist for the foreseeable future. Williams owns it.
The company's FY2025 press release stated it plainly: "In 2025, Williams delivered record Adjusted EBITDA of $7.75 billion, capping a five-year Adjusted EBITDA CAGR of 9%, and a five-year EPS CAGR of 14%."
The flywheel runs on expansion — not new pipelines, but extensions of the existing one. Transco keeps adding capacity through lateral connections and compression upgrades. In 2025, Williams placed multiple expansion projects into service — including Texas to Louisiana Energy Pathway and Southeast Energy Connector in April, followed by Alabama Georgia Connector and Commonwealth Energy Connector later in the year. Each expansion adds capacity that is pre-sold under long-term contracts. The revenue is locked in before the pipe is laid. And every additional molecule that flows through the system earns a toll — regulated, predictable, and growing with the demand for natural gas that powers the Eastern Seaboard's lights, its stoves, its factories, and now its data centers.
WHY THIS WORKS
Transco is irreplaceable infrastructure. 9,600 miles from Texas to New York. The largest-volume natural gas pipeline in the United States. There is no competing route. Building a second one would take a decade of permitting. The pipe that exists is the pipe that will exist.
Long-term contracts lock in revenue for decades. Utilities and power generators sign 10- to 20-year capacity agreements. Contracted capacity exceeded 33.4 billion cubic feet per day as of year-end 2024, with multiple expansions adding volume throughout 2025.
52 consecutive years of quarterly dividends — covered 2.37 times. The dividend has been paid every quarter since 1974. The coverage ratio means Williams earns more than double what it distributes.
AI and power demand are structural tailwinds. Data centers need electricity. Electricity needs natural gas. The Power Express expansion targets the Virginia market — the densest data center corridor in the world — with 950 million cubic feet per day of new capacity by 2030.
Miller and David Williams started digging ditches in Fort Smith, Arkansas, in 1908. They built pipes for other companies. Then they kept the pipes. One hundred and eighteen years later, the company they founded operates 32,000 miles of pipeline and sends its most valuable asset — Transco — from the wellheads of South Texas to the stovetops of Manhattan. The gas doesn't care about politics, about interest rates, about stock market sentiment. It flows because someone turned on a burner. And every time it flows, Williams collects.
