Advocates of the US natural gas pipeline industry expressed concern Tuesday over an Obama administration decision to delay construction of a controversial crude oil pipeline, fearing the move could have negative implications for natural gas pipeline development.

The US Justice and Interior departments and the US Army Corps of Engineers on Friday issued a joint statement halting construction of a portion of the Dakota Access project, a 1,172-mile, 30-inch oil pipeline being built to carry crude oil from North Dakota's Bakken and Three Forks producing fields across four states to a major refining area in Illinois.

The project is about 60% complete and Energy Transfer Partners remains committed to finishing it, despite the halt in construction, CEO Kelcy Warren told employees in memo Tuesday.

The administration action came after a federal judge ruled against a bid by the Standing Rock Sioux Indian tribe to block pipeline construction.

The tribe and their allies in the environmental community had been staging protests along the pipeline route, which they said would travel over sacred Native American sites.

While the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's process for siting gas pipelines differs substantially from the process to approving crude oil pipelines, gas pipeline advocates worried that the administration's action could have a negative knock-on effect on the gas industry.

"With its decision, the administration has turned the process for pipeline infrastructure projects that just engage in National Historic Preservation Act Section 106 tribal consultations into a moving target," Cathy Landry, a spokeswoman for the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, said in an email Monday.

"Regulatory approvals for these expensive infrastructure projects should be predictable and transparent. It is not good public policy to change the rules or expectations midstream," Landry said.

Landry said the administration's action in the Dakota Access has cast unnecessary doubt on the future of that project.

"In this case, not only were the expectations changed, but the project sponsor was provided with no date certainty on when it could complete the project," she said. "We believe that permitting rules should be consistent and predictable. Changes to those rules should be made prospectively using proper administrative procedure."

Christopher Stockton, a spokesman for The Williams Companies, noted that there are some important differences between the process that a company such as Williams must follow to gain approval for an interstate gas transmission pipeline and that needed for approval of an oil pipeline such as Dakota Access, a project of Energy Transfer Equity Partners.

"Our projects are FERC-regulated, unlike Energy Transfer's Dakota Access Pipeline, and consequently 100% of the project land requirements are subject to survey and full agency review," he said in an email. "Importantly, the FERC requires early coordination/consultation with Native American tribes, which continues throughout the entire permitting process."

Criticism of the administration's decision to halt pipeline construction also came Tuesday from energy industry-friendly groups and representatives of labor unions.

"We think that the administration is basically siding with protesters over a pipeline project where the project has already been permitted," Michael Whatley, executive vice president of the Consumer Energy Alliance, said Tuesday. "You could say any pipeline that is going to be protested could be subject to the same process, and that alarms us."

Whatley noted that the administration's action followed a ruling by US District Judge James E. Boasberg that pipeline construction could proceed.

"He basically had said the environmental impact statement has said this route was by far the safest route, and this route is not on the tribal lands that are being talked about," Whatley said.

"The fact that they basically took all of that into the decision and said, 'We're going to slow this down and we're going to do another look at the environmental and historical impacts and more stakeholder involvement,' ... is just a delay," he said.

In a joint conference call with reporters Tuesday, American Petroleum Institute President and CEO Jack Gerard and North America's Building Trades Unions President Sean McGarvey decried the decision to halt pipeline construction.

"The administration has unilaterally attempted to change the rules in the middle of the game," Girard said. He added that the administration's action represented "a dangerous precedent for our country."

McGarvey added that as a result of the decision to halt construction on the project, "750 of our members are idle, they're not receiving pay."

These idled workers "are not going to be able to stay in limbo forever," he said.

He warned that that the Obama administration decision on the Dakota Access line could have implications for any major infrastructure project, beyond just those undertaken by the energy industry, "if some vocal, violent minority wants to harness the power of the executive branch."

--Jim Magill, jim.magill@spglobal.com

--Edited by Jason Lindquist, jason.lindquist@spglobal.com

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