The pipeline in question is known as Keystone XL and would carry Canadian oil from the tar sands of Alberta 1,700 miles across America to Steele City, Nebraska, where it would join up with other pipelines taking it to refineries in Texas and Illinois. Most of it would then be exported.
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| Martin Jorgensen and his wife at their farm outside Winner, South Dakota. The pipeline would run for more than a mile under their land |
It would run for a mile under Mr Jorgensen's land near the tiny community of Winner, South Dakota.
It is a hugely divisive issue in Nebraska, South Dakota and Montana and the front-runners for the White House in November's presidential elections are not surprisingly on opposite sides of the fence.
Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have both said they would give it the go-ahead while Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have both promised to uphold the presidential veto which Barack Obama imposed last year.
Earlier this year Cruz, who is from oil-loving Texas, said: 'If you’re a Birkenstock-wearing, tree-hugging Greenpeace activist, you should love the Keystone pipeline.
'The Canadians are not going to leave the tar sands unmolested. They’ll send it to China to be refined there and it will be refined in a much, much dirtier way.'
Trump, being Trump, has dollar signs in his eyes.
He said recently he would give Keystone XL the go-ahead but wanted a 'big, big chunk of the profits, or even ownership rights' for the U.S.
Referring to TransCanada, the company behind the project, he said: 'I want 25 per cent of the deal for the United States. They’re going to make a fortune.'
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| The pipeline would bring oil from the tar sands region of Alberta across the border, through the Sandhills of Nebraska as far as Steele City. There it would join existing pipelines taking the oil south or east to refineries in Texas and Illinois |
The discovery of the tar sands deposits has made Canada a net oil exporter and Alberta in particular has seen a major economic boom.
But Alberta is land-locked and getting the oil refined and exported provides a dilemma.
There is an existing Keystone pipeline which delivers up to 590,000 barrels per day to oil refineries in Texas and Illinois.
But Keystone XL would, as its name suggests, be much larger and would have a much greater capacity.
TransCanada is also trying to push through another controversial pipeline, known as Energy East, which would carry oil to Quebec, where it could be refined and exported.
Some oil is transported by rail but in July 2013 an oil train derailed and exploded in the Quebec town of Lac-Megantic, killing 47 people.
It makes us sad that Obama's time is nearly up and the Republicans are the rich ones with the money and they will try to get it through
Mona Sue Walks Up
But while transportation by pipeline may appear safer there are many environmentalists and residents who say the dangers of a leak in Nebraska or South Dakota would be catastrophic.
This is partly because of the Ogallala Aquifer, a natural water table which sits beneath the Great Plains and provides fresh drinking water for 2.3 million people and irrigation for 30% of the farmland in the US.
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| Tom Poor Bear, vice president of the Oglala Lakota Nation, in his office on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota. He says clean water is one of the few things his people still have to cherish |
Among those who rely on the aquifer are Oglala Lakota Nation, a Native American tribe who live on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.
The Oglala Lakota - better known in days gone by as the Sioux - were once proud warriors. Crazy Horse, who defeated Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, was an Oglala Lakota.
Nowadays they are a pale shadow of their former selves.
Unemployment on the Pine Ridge reservation is 80% and alcoholism is so endemic that liquor has been banned. Even so dozens of drunks from the reservation wander across the border and drink themselves into a stupor in the town of Whiteclay, Nebraska, which has to be one of the saddest places I have ever visited.
Tom Poor Bear, tribal vice president of the Oglala Lakota Nation, told me clean drinking water was one of the few things the white man had not taken away from his people, until now.
Speaking to me in front of a large tribal flag in his office in Pine Ridge, he said: 'There has already been breaks in the pipeline in Canada where it has poisoned the water and killed animals and plants.'
He described the proposed pipeline as being like a 'black snake crawling across America to bring destruction and death'.
Mr Poor Bear says the pipeline will not bring jobs to his people and he says the only people to benefit will be the big oil corporations and the infamous Koch brothers, who not only drill for oil in Alberta but also refine much of it.
The Koch brothers have donated millions of dollars to the Republican Party.
The resentment of the Oglala Lakota has to be put into context.
In 1868 they signed the Fort Laramie Treaty, which set up the Great Sioux Reservation, a vast area covering western South Dakota.
Then in 1874 gold was discovered in the Black Hills (Paha Sapa), which were considered sacred to the Lakota.
The treaty was torn up and the Lakota were shunted into tiny infertile corners of the state, like Pine Ridge.
To rub salt in the wound the faces of four presidents were later carved into Mount Rushmore, deep in the heart of the Black Hills.
Mr Poor Bear voices the anger at the latest incursion that Keystone XL represents: 'If this pipeline becomes a reality it will cause a civil war and not just with the Native Americans but also the white ranchers. People will fight for their lifestyle. Our way of life is under threat again.'
Ford Walks Out, 68, a distant descendant of Crazy Horse, said he believes lobbyists in Washington have 'brainwashed' people into thinking the pipeline is safe.
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| Inferno: In 2013 a runaway oil train derailed and 47 people died in an explosion and fire in the town of Lac-Megantic in Quebec. Many supporters of the Keystone XL pipeline say it is a safer option than carrying oil by rail |
His friend, Mona Sue Walks Up, agrees: 'What's $3m a year if your grandchildren have only got polluted water to drink?'
Mona, 70, praises the president's exercise of his power of veto and says: 'Obama is thinking about our people but it makes us sad that Obama's time is nearly up and the Republicans are the rich ones with the money and they will try to get it through.'
Steele City, Nebraska is at the center of this big political showdown but it is a sleepy town with a population of only 84 and there are no protest signs or graffiti to indicate the controversy which surrounds it.
Just outside of town is a pumping station which gives the only clue to the area's importance as a proposed junction on the oil pipeline network.
Don Swett's house overlooks the pumping station and the fields nearby where little TransCanada marker posts indicate 'WARNING - High Pressure Petroleum Pipeline'.
They have had a pipeline in these parts since 2010 and it has ruffled few feathers.
Mr Swett said: 'There wasn't much controversy with the first pipeline and most people in town are probably for the new one. There's certainly nobody that upset about it. I think it's a safer option than the railroad.'
TransCanada says Keystone XL has undergone eight safety reviews and the company points to aquifer experts like James Goecke, who says that even if oil were to leak it would not affect the majority of the Ogallala Aquifer because oil cannot run uphill.
But Hillary Clinton came out against the pipeline last year. She said: 'I oppose it because I don’t think it’s in the best interest of what we need to do to combat climate change.'
That came as no great surprise to Martin Jorgensen, who has little time for Democrats, refers to Obama as 'that damn fool president' and says Hillary would be 'just as bad as he is'.
Mr Jorgensen's father came to South Dakota from Denmark more than 100 years ago and started out as a 'homesteader'.
'Now we farm 20,000 acres and have 5,000 cattle too. We are the biggest bull breeders in America,' he says proudly.
He says the Democrats are opposed to 'progress' and he says: 'There are a hell of a lot of pipelines in the US, both for crude oil and natural gas. They don't create any problems.'
Mr Jorgensen looks at the world much as he views his animals.
The most fertile bulls have the best of everything while those who don't come up with the goods soon find themselves on their way to the abattoir.
Mr Jorgensen claims the local Native American population are workshy and 'want to live on welfare' and he said he had given up on employing them because they were too unreliable.
It remains to be seen whether he will get his wish in November and see a Republican in the White House but if so expect Keystone XL to get the green light within weeks of the inauguration ceremony.
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