CANNON BALL, N.D. — The company building a $3.8 billion oil pipeline sought a federal judge’s permission Tuesday to circumvent President Obama’s administration and move ahead with a disputed section of the project in North Dakota, as opponents held protests across the country urging it to be rejected.

Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners and a subsidiary asked the court to let them lay pipe under a Missouri River reservoir, a plan the Standing Rock Sioux says threatens its drinking water and cultural sites. The Army Corps of Engineers said Monday it needs more time to study the impact of the plan.

While President-elect Donald Trump, a pipeline supporter, likely would greenlight the project when he takes office in January, the company is trying to win federal approval — or a court order — to allow it to go forward now. The delay has already cost nearly $100 million, the company said in court documents, “and further delay in the consideration of this case would add millions of dollars more each month in costs which cannot be recovered.”

In a statement Tuesday, the company blamed the Obama administration for “political interference” in the pipeline review process.

The Corps referred a request for comment to the Justice Department, which declined comment.

Protests were being held Tuesday across the country, from California to Vermont. Activists called for demonstrations at Corps offices and at banks financing the pipeline construction.

More than two dozen people were arrested near Mandan, North Dakota, after a group of approximately 400 protesters put a truck and tree branches on BNSF Railway tracks near a pipeline work staging area and tried to set it on fire, Morton County sheriff’s spokesman Rob Keller said.

“They had a rope soaked with kerosene,” he said. “A [Highway Patrol] trooper with an extinguisher doused it so it wouldn’t light.”

Trains were delayed three hours, railroad spokeswoman Amy McBeth said. Officers in riot gear used pepper spray and in one instance a stun gun against protesters who refused to leave.

“What they are doing here is a crime, an environmental crime, and there are real victims,” said Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an environmental attorney and president of the New York-based Waterkeeper Alliance.

The Corps on Monday called for more study and input from the Standing Rock Sioux before it decides whether to allow the pipeline to cross under Lake Oahe. The 1,200-mile pipeline that’s to carry North Dakota oil through South Dakota and Iowa to a shipping point in Illinois is largely complete

— Associated Press