Nebraska regulators have approved the Keystone XL pipeline, paving the way for the new project to be built despite last week’s major oil spill from the existing Keystone pipeline operated by Calgary-based TransCanada Corporation.

Five members of Nebraska’s Public Service Commission voted 3-2 on Monday to approve a 275-mile stretch of pipeline that would cut through the state — the final regulatory hurdle the $8 billion project needed to go forward.

Former president Barack Obama rejected the project on environmental grounds, but President Donald Trump reversed that decision in March, fulfilling a campaign promise.

The new pipeline will carry 830,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada’s oil sands to Nebraska, where it will join the original Keystone pipeline.

The route approved on Monday is not TransCanada’s preferred route, however. Greenpeace campaigner Rachel Rye Butler said in a statement that the permit “complicates” things for the company.

TransCanada said it would conduct a review of the ruling “while assessing how the decision would impact the cost and schedule of the project.”

The only commissioner to give reasons for their vote was Crystal Rhoades, who voted no. She said landowners may not be aware that the pipeline crosses their property, and the current route still disrupts sensitive environmental areas, including a major aquifer and grass-covered sand dunes.

There was no evidence that jobs created by the project would be given to Nebraska residents, she said, and the applicant had not consulted with local Nebraska Indigenous groups.

The decision comes only days after the company’s existing Keystone pipeline spilled at least 795,000 litres (about 5,000 barrels) of oil across farmland in South Dakota. But a 2011 state law stopped regulators from considering pipeline safety or the risk of spills in their decision. Instead regulators relied only on testimony and documents submitted through a public hearing process.

TransCanada says it shut down the Keystone pipeline at 6 a.m. on Thursday after detecting a drop in pressure. The company says it isolated the section of pipe within 15 minutes and began emergency response procedures.

Over the weekend, TransCanada sent more crews to the site, but the type of oil carried by the pipeline makes this spill especially hard to clean up. The line carries diluted bitumen, a heavy, tar-like substance that requires adding water to separate it from the ground.

Last week’s incident isn’t the first time Keystone has leaked. In April 2016, the pipeline spilled 400 barrels of oil in South Dakota, which took 10 months to clean up. A preliminary report on the incident by the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), a regulatory body, blamed the leak on a welding problem. Keystone also leaked twice back in 2011, in North Dakota and Kansas.

Since it was first announced in 2008, Keystone XL has faced mass protests.

Critics of the pipeline point to greenhouse gas emissions and the risk of spills as reasons not to approve it, while proponents have cheered job prospects that come with any new infrastructure project.

Opponents in Nebraska also decried the project’s original route through an ecologically sensitive area of grass-covered sand dunes called the Sandhills. The company altered its route in response to concerns, but farmers say the pipeline route still touches the Sandhills.

Indigenous groups across the continent have vowed to continue opposing the pipeline. “The Treaty Alliance of Tribes up and down the Keystone XL pipeline route will be standing strong along with all our other allies to beat back this threat to our water, our people and our future,” Larry Wright Jr. of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska said in a statement on Monday.

TransCanada has not given a clear timeline for when construction will begin or when the pipeline will actually start carrying oil into the U.S.

Cover image: This aerial photo shows spills from TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone pipeline, Friday, Nov. 17, 2017, that leaked an estimated 210,000 gallons of oil onto agricultural land in northeastern South Dakota, near Amherst, S.D., the company and state regulators said Thursday. (Dronebase via AP)