WASHINGTON — The Keystone XL pipeline won’t be required to use American-made steel to earn construction approval from the Trump administration, the White House said Friday, despite President Donald Trump’s repeated claims.

The president’s executive order mandating the use of U.S. steel is “specific to new pipelines or those that are being repaired,” White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters Friday aboard Air Force One.

“Since this one is already current, under construction, the steel is already literally sitting there, it would be hard to go back,” she said.

That’s welcome news to TransCanada Corp. as it moves forward with the $8 billion project. The pipeline would span 1,179 miles from Alberta through three states — Montana, South Dakota, and Nebraska — before connecting to an existing network feeding crude to U.S. Gulf Coast refineries. The line would carry as much as 830,000 barrels of oil a day, including some from North Dakota’s Bakken shale.

In 2012, the company said it expected half of the 821,000 tons of steel needed to construct the pipeline to be produced inside of the United States. The remainder of the steel was expected to be imported from Canada, Italy and India.

But exempting Keystone XL from the president’s requirement to use American steel would seem to fly in the face of Trump’s public comments. Trump has repeatedly boasted that he forced pipeline companies to agree to use U.S. steel in their projects.

A White House official who would only discuss the pipeline issue on the condition of anonymity said the Commerce Department was working on a plan for the president’s order requiring U.S. steel, so the administration couldn’t implement it until that effort had completed. Moreover, the official said, because the Keystone XL pipeline is currently under construction it does not count as a new, retrofitted, repaired, or expanded pipeline.

Asked about the issue, TransCanada issued a statement saying it continued “to be encouraged as our Presidential Permit application makes its way through the approval process.”