Thousands protest TransCanada pipeline Sunday

Washington – President Barack Obama missed most of it, but thousands gathered in Lafayette Square to demand the State Department disapprove the $7 billion TransCanada pipeline.

The President was playing golf at Fort Belvoir while the protesters berated the plan to pipe oil extracted from Canadian “tar sands” 1,700 miles across 6 states for refinement at Houston. The process will require steam-washing the low grade petroleum out of the sands prior to its refinement.

Protesters said the refinement is too energy intensive to help relieve America's dependence on foreign oil.

TransCanada spokesman James Millar said the pipeline would help reduce American dependence on oil from the Middle East and Venezuela while creating thousands of new construction and manufacturing jobs.

"Killing Keystone just leads to more of the same — hundreds of oil tankers shipping millions of barrels of higher priced oil across our oceans to American shores," Mr. Millar said in a statement.