The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will grant the final approval needed to finish the Dakota Access Pipeline project, U.S. Senator John Hoeven of North Dakota said on Tuesday.
Opponents of the project, however, including the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, whose reservation is adjacent to the route, claimed that Hoeven was jumping the gun and that an environmental study underway must be completed before the permit was granted.
Hoeven said Acting Secretary of the Army Robert Speer had told him and Vice President Mike Pence of the move. “This will enable the company to complete the project, which can and will be built with the necessary safety features to protect the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and others downstream,” Hoeven, a Republican, said in a statement.
Representatives for the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Justice could not be reached immediately for comment late on Tuesday.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order last week allowing Energy Transfer Partners LP’s (ETP.N) Dakota Access Pipeline to go forward, after months of protests from Native American groups and climate activists pushed the administration of President Barack Obama to ask for an additional environmental review of the controversial project.
For months, climate activists and the Standing Rock Sioux tribe have been protesting against the completion of the line, looking to block the last permit needed to tunnel under the Missouri River.
On Tuesday evening, the Standing Rock tribe said the Army could not circumvent a scheduled environmental impact study that was ordered in January. “The Army Corps lacks statutory authority to simply stop the EIS,” they said in a statement.
The tribe said it would take legal action against the U.S. Army’s reported decision to grant the final easement.
The office of U.S. Representative Kevin Cramer, a Republican who represents North Dakota, also said in statement the Army Corps of Engineers would allow the project to move forward.
Jan Hasselman, an Earthjustice lawyer representing the tribe, told Reuters that Hoeven and Cramer “jumped the gun” by saying the easement would be granted and that the easement was not yet issued.
Dallas Goldtooth of the Indigenous Environment Network, which has been a vocal opponent of the pipeline, said on Twitter that lawmakers were “trying to incite violence” by saying the easement was granted before it was official.
A spokesman for Hoeven, Don Canton, said it would probably be a “matter of days rather than weeks” for the easement to be issued.
Going ahead with the pipeline would mark a bitter defeat for Native American tribes and climate activists, who successfully blocked the project earlier and vowed to fight the decision through legal action.
Oil producers in North Dakota are expected to benefit from a quicker route for crude oil to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries.
(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici and Eric Beech in Washington and Alex Dobuzinskis in Los Angeles; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Paul Tait)
