An executive with the Canadian company seeking to build an oil pipeline across the United States to the Texas Gulf Coast says a new route around Nebraska’s environmentally sensitive Sandhills region will be ready within weeks.

TransCanada’s president of energy and oil pipelines Alex Pourbaix said Tuesday the company plans to resubmit its permit request to the U.S. State Department. He also says construction of the southern tier of the Keystone XL pipeline, which doesn’t require a special permit, will begin by late spring or early summer.

Pourbaix spoke at a panel discussion at an energy conference in Houston.

He says the southern tier of the pipeline from Cushing, Okla., through Texas will help relieve but not completely eliminate a bottleneck at Midwest refineries.