Controversial Dakota pipeline to go ahead after Army approval

The US Army will grant the final permit for the controversial Dakota Access oil pipeline after an order from President Donald Trump to expedite the project despite opposition from Native American tribes and climate activists.

In a court filing on Tuesday, the Army said that it would allow the final section of the line to tunnel under North Dakota's Lake Oahe, part of the Missouri River system. This could enable the $3.8 billion pipeline to begin operation as soon as June.

"The Department of the Army announced today that it has completed a presidential-directed review of the remaining easement request for the Dakota Access pipeline, and has notified Congress that it intends to grant an easement," the Army's statement said.

Final approval is expected to be announced as soon as Wednesday.

Energy Transfer Partners is building the 1,885 km line to help move crude from the shale oilfields of North Dakota to Illinois en route to the Gulf of Mexico, where many US refineries are located.

The permit was the last bureaucratic hurdle to the pipeline's completion, and Tuesday's decision drew praise from supporters of the project and outrage from activists, including promises of a legal challenge from the Standing Rock Sioux tribe.

Protests against the project last year drew thousands of people to the North Dakota plains including Native American tribes and environmental activists, and protest camps sprung up.

The Standing Rock Sioux, which contends the pipeline would desecrate sacred sites and potentially pollute its water source, vowed to shut pipeline operations down if construction is completed, without elaborating how it would do so. The tribe called on its supporters to protest in Washington on 10 March rather than return to North Dakota.

"As Native peoples, we have been knocked down again, but we will get back up," the tribe said in the statement. "We will rise above the greed and corruption that has plagued our peoples since first contact. We call on the Native Nations of the United States to stand together, unite and fight back."

Former President Barack Obama's administration last year delayed completion of the pipeline pending a review of tribal concerns and in December ordered an environmental study.

Less than two weeks after Trump ordered a review of the permit request, the Army said in a filing in District Court in Washington D.C. it would cancel that study. The final permit, known as an easement, could come in as little as a day, according to the filing.

There was no need for the environmental study as there was already enough information on the potential impact of the pipeline to grant the permit, Robert Speer, acting secretary of the US Army, said in a statement.