Correction appended.

HOUSTON -- TransCanada will proceed with construction on the southern end of the Keystone XL pipeline pending permitting approval, an official for the company said today.

During a presentation this morning here at the Pipe Tech Americas summit, Les Cherwenuk, project director for pipeline development for the proposed Keystone XL project at TransCanada Pipelines Ltd., said his company will move ahead with building a segment of the controversial Keystone project to run from Cushing, Okla., to Houston-area refineries. The Army Corps of Engineers must sign off on those plans, but Cherwenuk expressed confidence that they will do so.

"We're quite confident that this year we will be constructing that span from Cushing down to Houston," he said.

Building just the Cushing-Houston section of Keystone XL would still be economical for TransCanada. Cushing is currently bottlenecked, as companies are finding it difficult to move crude out of the West Texas Intermediate price point hub to markets.

Other pipeline companies have made similar plans to build new capacity to bring oil from Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast. But no other sections are planned or will move forward before receiving the national interest approval from the State Department, Cherwenuk told Greenwire in an interview on the side of the conference.

TransCanada says Keystone XL will also be used to move crude out of Bakken Shale fields of Montana and North Dakota. Though the company is looking at possibly expanding pipeline capacity in that production zone, no definitive plans to put in Keystone infrastructure there earlier are in place, he said.

"The key part is that section that runs over the border," Cherwenuk said. "As a pipeline company, we're of course looking at what's happening in the Bakken, but so far, there are no separate plans."

Asked why TransCanada will not launch legal action or an appeal, Cherwenuk said his firm sees no real reason to do so. The approval process is very well-defined, and Keystone XL has cleared every part of it so far. Thus the company will simply stay on track, reapplying to State once TransCanada and Nebraska reach an agreement.

TransCanada's next move is to continue working with Nebraska authorities on a new route for Keystone XL and to proceed with the Cushing-Houston segment. Cherwenuk said TransCanada expected Nebraska regulators to make their first comments on the revised routing options as early as next week.

"We've satisfied all the requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act," he said during his presentation to industry officials on where Keystone XL planning stood. "We're working very productively as we speak with the state of Nebraska to find a permissible route."

Correction: An earlier version of this report misidentified the speaker as Ken Murchie.