The State Department moved to restore its credibility to decide the future of a proposed pipeline between the tar sands of Alberta and the refineries of Texas on Friday, after a day of contentious public hearings on the project.
The four-hour session in Washington DC saw union members heckling a tearful teenager from a Nebraska ranch, an impassioned speech from a Franciscan friar, a brief chant by a Lakota tribal leader, and oil industry lobbyists smoothly promising the Keystone XL pipeline would bring back jobs to the American midwest.
About 70 people got a chance to air their views.
But one recurring theme, from environmental groups in Washington and pipeline opponents from Nebraska and other states, was that the State Department had taken sides with TransCanada, the company building the pipeline, and the oil industry.
Kerri-Ann Jones, who has been the State Department's point person on the pipeline as assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environment and scientific affairs, insisted that was not the case. "We are running an objective process," she said.
She dismissed criticism from Friends of the Earth and the National Wildlife Federation that the State Department – and Hillary Clinton herself was favouring the pipeline industry.
"We are impartial," she said. "We are in listening mode. We have not made a decision and we are not leaning in any one direction"
The State Department has authority over the project, because it crosses the Canadian border, and is expected to make a decision in November.
However, environmental groups argue the outcome is already fixed, producing friendly emails between State Department officials and pipeline executives as evidence of bias.
Environmental groups, they argue, were left out of the process. "Clinton has never taken the time to hear from American landowners who stand in the pipeline's path," said Jeremy Symons of the National Wildlife Federation.
Virtually no-one inside Friday's session – or at the pipeline street protests – believes that the public hearings will influence Clinton's decision.
"I already know what the outcome of the hearing is," said Carlos Reyes, an unemployed house painter who was at the demonstration. "They are going to let the pipeline go through. I have no illusions about it."
But Reyes added: "I am here to say that if you are going to operate this way, there are going to be consequences."
Some of those consequences were already apparent in Nebraska, where the state legislature is gearing up to block the pipeline's projected route across an important aquifer. Landowners are also threatening civil disobedience.
"Really Nebraska is the hotbed right now. It's the war zone," said Susan Luebbe, a rancher from the Sandhills region who spoke against the pipeline.
She said a pipeline leak would destroy her cattle ranch. "We can't live without water."
Opposition to the pipeline has deepened in the last 18 months, especially on the route of the proposed pipeline.
Some of that is TransCanada's own doing. Landowners from Nebraska to Texas have accused the pipeline company's agents of bullying them into signing over access rights to their property.
The heavy-handed tactics has broadened the opposition from traditional environmentalists, who oppose the pipeline because it will deepen America's use of fossil fuels – and tar sands is an especially dirty fossil fuel. Opposition to the tar sands pipeline has also gained momentum from the Occupy Wall Street protests.
Luebbe accused TransCanada agents of harassing people in old people's homes to sign away rights to their land. The push-back seems to have taken TransCanada by surprise. The company's chief executive Russ Girling told reporters on Friday he never anticipated a battle in the American heartland.
"I did not expect this to become a lightning rod of the debate between fossils fuels and alternative fuels," Girling told a press conference.
