A bitter two-year labor dispute that engulfed everyone from Vancouver police and Washington’s governor to state and federal agriculture officials may have ended, as the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and Northwest grain terminal operators have reached a tentative contract agreement.

The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service announced the unsettled accord Tuesday, saying it was reached just before midnight Monday in talks between the Longshore union and the Pacific Northwest Grain Handlers Association. In Vancouver, the announcement means normal export operations at United Grain Corp. at the Port of Vancouver may proceed. United Grain, the West Coast’s largest grain elevator, has been all but shut down since July 7, when the state Department of Agriculture stopped providing grain inspections in response to threats from pickets.

Gov. Jay Inslee praised the tentative settlement, saying it allows grain inspectors to immediately resume their work at United Grain. Pat McCormick, spokesman for the Grain Handlers Association, said United Grain’s operations will be fully up and running “as soon as the inspectors are available.”

McCormick said he expects union pickets — which the Longshore union has maintained since February 2013, when United Grain locked out Longshore workers at its facility — will continue until the union ratifies the tentative agreement. Until then, he said, United Grain will continue to use non-union employees and temporary contract workers to run its operations.

In an email to The Columbian Tuesday, Jennifer Sargent, spokeswoman for the Longshore union, said each of the union’s local units will “review the tentative agreement and vote according to their internal rules, with results to be announced Aug. 25.” Terms of the agreement won’t be made public, she said, until union members review and vote on the tentative settlement. Sargent added, “Reduced picket lines will remain” at United Grain and at Columbia Grain in Portland (where Longshore workers were locked out in May 2013) “while members vote on the agreement.”