US President Donald Trump has signed two executive actions to advance the building of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines.
Tuesday's steps illustrate Trump's plan to give the oil industry more freedom to expand infrastructure and ease transportation bottlenecks.
Former President Barack Obama rejected Transcanada Corp's Keystone XL oil pipeline in November 2015 after environmentalists campaigned against the project for more than seven years.
The pipeline will run from Canada to US refineries in the Gulf Coast. the United States government needed to approve the pipeline because it crossed the border.
The $3.8bn Dakota Access Pipeline has also faced opposition.
Activists have spent months protesting plans to route the pipeline beneath a lake near a North Dakota Indian reservation, saying the project poses a threat to water resources and sacred Native American sites.
Energy Transfer Partners, the company that wants to build the pipeline, disputed that and stated it would be safe.
The pipeline is to carry North Dakota oil through South Dakota and Iowa to a shipping point in Illinois.
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Aljazeera