The path appears to have been almost completely cleared for an oil pipeline to come through West Central Illinois.
The Associated Press reports regulators in North Dakota approved the Dakota Access Pipeline on Wednesday after approval had already been given by commissions in South Dakota and Illinois, two of the other three states through which the pipeline will travel.
The 11-hundred-mile pipeline will run through Morgan and Scott Counties. It will terminate at a junction in Patoka, Illinois. Pipeline officials say it will carry as much as 600-thousand barrels of oil every day from the oil fields of western North Dakota.
Iowa’s regulatory commission must still approve the pipeline, but according to the AP, Energy Transfer Partners, the company for the pipeline project, expects that approval next month.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers must also approve the pipeline because it would cross the Missouri River twice in North Dakota.