Wow! What an election! Now that Washington, D.C., has recovered from its election hangover, it has shifted to full transition mode.

I’m not sure if people are more surprised by the outcome of the election, or more grateful that this long, rough election season has come to an end.

If you are a Democrat, congrats for picking up a couple of seats in the Senate and a couple of seats in the House while winning the popular vote for the presidential election.

If you are a Republican, you won the Electoral College in convincing fashion, which ultimately propels your candidate to the Oval Office—while pulling off an almost impossible task of defending 24 seats in the Senate and only losing two seats to ensure that you maintain the majority in the Senate, while preserving your majority in the House.

The even better prize for Republicans is that President-elect Donald Trump gets to nominate at least one future Supreme Court justice, which will determine the current balance of the high court. It’s also a distinct probability that President-elect Trump could completely reshape the high court for many years to come with the possible additional retirements of several other Supreme Court justices n the late stages of their respective careers.

So what does this all mean, and how will it impact our midstream industry going into the future?

To start, I would say that President Barack Obama’s >environment and climate change legacy agenda that he put together for the past couple years via regulations that have really impacted midstream operations in a negative way are about to be dismantled. This dismantling, or lifting of the regulatory shackles, should be welcome news to the midstream industry.

However, the next question is how long this will take, and the answer may take some time depending on the route President- elect Trump decides to take.

Trump has promised to undo the Clean Power Plan, remove the U.S from the Paris Agreement on climate, roll back oil and gas regulations and stop developing existing >regulations for methane emissions from the oil and gas industry. It’s important to note that during the campaign, Trump pledged to do away with “needless and job-killing” regulations as part of his economic plan. Trump further pledged to conduct a “targeted review” to identify regulations that inhibit job growth.

This is a huge deviation from the Obama administration that had relentlessly cranked out regulation after regulation that inhibited the growth of the midstream industry. In fact, some of the Obama administration’s actions like the Clean Power Plan picked winners and losers and favored one energy source over another energy source.

I think we will see an end to that type of action with a Trump administration.

Trump will be one of the most pro-business and anti-regulation presidents we have seen in the last couple of decades. As a businessman,he has seen first-hand how over-regulation can stifle business growth, impact job loss and prevent projects from even getting started.

In his energy plan, Trump proposes to “encourage the use of natural gas and other American energy resources that will both reduce emissions but also reduce the price of energy and increase our economic output.” Natural gas will have a prominent role to play with the Trump administration, which is a welcome relief from the Obama administration, which seemed to have had a difficult time embracing natural gas and the midstream industry for that matter.

Infrastructure will also get a huge boost from President-elect Trump. More importantly, I think we will see the return of regulatory certainty to what has become—and should have never become—an uncertain permitting process for large midstream infrastructure projects.

This hopefully means politics won’t interfere with the permitting process at the last minute to sway a particular project in the direction of political will and override the permitting process.

This doesn’t mean infrastructure projects won’t have to go through the permitting process, because they will need to. It also doesn’t mean that the “keep it in the ground” movement will go away because it won’t. It also means we will see an increase in litigation specifically challenging midstream projects. The opposition will still be there, but it will be a much more balanced environment in which the midstream industry can operate.

The other significant item from this election that most people aren’t thinking about is that President-elect Trump doesn’t have to go it alone, meaning he will have a Republican majority in the Senate and in the House to work with and back him up. This means the 115th Congress can share >some of the load of removing the regulatory shackles that have been placed on the midstream industry. It’s important to note that the 114th Congress always had to legislate under the threat of a presidential veto, and they did not have the votes to override that veto, resulting in a number of legislative stalemates.

The 115th Congress doesn’t have the votes to override a presidential veto either. However, if we are talking about energy, regulatory reform and the economy, then the president- elect and the 115th Congress should be on the same page and working together.

This is a huge difference and may only last for a couple years since midterm elections are right around the corner in 2018, but it should open up the economy to some real change. This is not to say that Congress and President-elect Trump won’t have their differences and battles, but the outlook for the next two years for the midstream industry is really good.

This election will create a much more level playing field for the midstream industry in the next couple of years. There will be opportunities and regulatory relief that we have not seen in close to a decade.

The important question is whether the midstream industry will be able to capitalize on its newfound good fortune.

Matthew Hite is vice president of government affairs for the GPA Midstream Association.