A major project for North America will be weaving it's way through Siouxland, and with the resources it delivers, one local community hopes it will also deliver a stronger economy.

The Keystone oil pipeline will soon deliver close to half a million barrels of crude oil each day, but Thursday the focus was on celebrating the much anticipated project with the community of Yankton, South Dakota.

Thursday afternoon the Yankton Chamber of Commerce and the Transcanada Pipeline Company had a community barbeque and groundbreaking. Yankton will serve as one of the Midwest hubs for the new keystone pipeline project that will run from Canada through the eastern Dakotas and Nebraska and deliver oil to refineries in Kansas, Illinois, and Oklahoma.

The project will bring hundreds of specialized workers to Siouxland, new neighbors that the Yankton community is eager to welcome.

"It could bring 400 to 500 extra workers here this summer. Some of them might bring their families," said Brad Dykes, Chairman of the Pipeline Taskforce put together by Yankton's Chamber of Commerce. "It will be a big economic boost for us, we believe, if we can provide the services and goods they need, and we think we can."

Yankton has one of the highest unemployment rates in the state of South Dakota, and while the pipeline might not hire many workers locally, the workers that are brought in will bring commerce to local businesses.

The Yankton Chamber of Commerce hopes to see a 60 to 80 percent increase in sales tax for the city while the workers are in town for the next few months.

"Of course we have a little higher unemployment than we'd like to have right now and that has a trickle down effect, of course, into the local economy when people slow down on their spending and here we have a million dollar a week payroll project coming through town for anywhere from six to eight months. If that money turns two to three times within the community, it will be huge," said Yankton's Chamber President, Lynn Peterson.

Construction on the section of pipeline in Yankton will start in the next couple weeks and continue until October or November. Transcanada hopes to have the pipeline in service by the first quarter of 2010.

Another oil project hoping to make its home in South Dakota, the Hyperion refinery, could begin construction next summer. The pipeline and refinery have announced no business ties at this time.