Company: ATO
Filing Date: 2025-03-27
Form Type: CORRESP
Source: 0000731802-25-000010
Chunk: 3

Company: ATMOS ENERGY CORP
Filing Date: 2025-03-27
Form: CORRESP
Chunk 3
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, no

Mr. Mark Wojciechowski and Karl Hiller

United States Securities and Exchange Commission

March 27, 2025

Page 4

single factor is determinative in our decision to take mitigative actions on our transmission pipeline systems.

We periodically review our DIM and TIM programs, including potential alternative approaches to the risk analysis and risk mitigation methodologies, within the decision-making framework of these programs.

In response to the Staff’s comment to provide more detail regarding our program to replace or upgrade our systems, we propose to include in our 2025 Form 10-K:

To manage the integrity and safety of our natural gas distribution and transmission systems, consistent with PHMSA regulations, we have integrity management programs that integrate information sources and data, identify risks to infrastructure integrity, ranks risks, and designate measures and actions to reduce or mitigate risks as appropriate. These programs take into consideration numerous input factors and no single factor is determinative in our decision to take mitigative actions on our distribution or transmission pipeline systems. Based upon these programs, along with the oversight of state regulators responsible for adopting and enforcing the federal pipeline safety regulations, we believe that our distribution and transmission pipeline systems are suitable and adequate for our purposes.

We believe that the proposed disclosure, together with the disclosure already provided in Item 2 of our Form 10-K detailing (among other things) our miles of pipe, storage capacity and maximum delivery capability, provides investors with information that will reasonably inform them as to the suitability, adequacy and productive capacity of our pipeline systems as required by Instruction 1 to Item 102 of Regulation S-K.

Further, as the Staff notes, and as we have disclosed in our risk factors on page 18 of our Form 10-K, our business requires that we make significant capital expenditures on a long-term basis to continuously modernize our distribution and transmission system. These investments reflect our commitment to our vision to be the safest provider of natural gas services. Our anticipated capital expenditures also reflect costs associated with the need to continually build new capacity to serve our growing communities, and we anticipate incurring significant capital expenditures for the foreseeable future. Between fiscal years 2025 and 2029, we anticipate our capital expenditures to be approximately $24 billion, with more than 80% of this amount dedicated to safety and reliability spending, guided by our pipeline integrity management programs. The magnitude and allocation of these expenditures may be affected by factors such as new policy and regulations, population growth, increased labor and materials costs.

Mr. Mark Wojciechowski and