Dakota pipeline could be up within weeks
Oil could be flowing through the $US3.8 billion ($A4.9 billion) Dakota Access pipeline in less than two weeks, according to court documents filed by the developer.
It comes as police and soldiers start clearing a protest camp in North Dakota where pipeline opponents had gathered for the better part of a year.
Energy Transfer Partners has finished drilling under Lake Oahe and will soon be laying pipe under the Missouri River reservoir, the Dallas-based company said.
"Dakota Access estimates and targets that the pipeline will be complete and ready to flow oil anywhere between the week of March 6, 2017, and April 1, 2017," company attorney William Scherman said in the documents filed in Washington on Tuesday.
The work under the Missouri River reservoir is the last stretch of the 1200-mile (1931 km) pipeline that will move oil from North Dakota through South Dakota and Iowa to a shipping point in Illinois.
ETP got permission for the lake work last month from the pro-energy Trump administration, though American Indian tribes continue fighting the project in court.
The Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes say the pipeline threatens their drinking water, cultural sites and ability to practice their religion, which depends on pure water. ETP rejects those claims and says the pipeline is safe.
The tribes have been fighting the construction since last summer, when an initial lawsuit was filed.
The drilling work is just to the north of a protest camp on federal land where pipeline opponents had gathered since August. Authorities shut down the camp on Wednesday ahead of spring flooding, with an estimated 150-200 protesters leaving peacefully.
Authorities said they arrested 46 people, including a group of military veterans.
As police in full riot gear worked to arrest the stragglers, clean up crews began razing buildings on the square-mile piece of property at the confluence of the Cannonball and Missouri rivers.
