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The so-called Gulf Coast project will run a 500 mile pipeline from Cushing, Oklahoma to Nederland, Texas near Port Arthur. That will clear up a bottleneck in crude oil production that has been building up in the midcontinent for well over a year.

Michelle Foss is chief economist at the University of Texas’s Bureau of Economic Geology.

“We’ll benefit from any additional investment downstream as the supply makes its way to the Gulf Coast region. We will also benefit from all of the economic returns to the refiners as they put finished petroleum products into the U.S. market.”

Foss says that by lowering the cost of refined products, the project could also boost exports of those products from the Gulf Coast, particularly to U.S. customers in the Caribbean.

With the final permits in place, TransCanada says it’s in a position to begin building the pipeline in a matter of weeks.