HOUS­TON - A Cana­di­an com­pa­ny that wants to build an oil pipeline from Al­ber­ta's tar sands re­gion to Texas re­finer­ies has re­ceived a fi­nal per­mit for the Gulf Coast por­tion of the project and an­nounced yes­ter­day that con­struc­tion on the 485-mile (780-kilo­me­tre) sec­tion would start in the com­ing weeks.

Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma en­cour­aged Tran­sCana­da to move ahead with the seg­ment that will run from a re­fin­ery in Cush­ing, Ok­la­homa to Texas af­ter he re­ject­ed the broad­er plan, say­ing the pipeline need­ed to be rerout­ed around Ne­bras­ka's sen­si­tive Sand Hills re­gion. For that project, Tran­sCana­da needs pres­i­den­tial ap­proval be­cause it cross­es an in­ter­na­tion­al bor­der.

The short­er por­tion on­ly re­quires per­mits from state and fed­er­al agen­cies. Tran­sCana­da said the fi­nal of three per­mits it need­ed from the Army Corps of En­gi­neers had been ap­proved. The line from Cush­ing will help re­lieve a bot­tle­neck at the Ok­la­homa re­fin­ery, but doesn't ful­fill Tran­sCana­da's broad­er goal of trans­port­ing more Cana­di­an crude to US re­finer­ies.

AP