TransCanada Corp. (TRP) chief executive Russ Girling acknowledged that opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline have slowed its approval, though he said his company remains committed to the project. “There’s no question that the noise outside is having an influence on the process,” he said today, in an interview in Washington . “The project has been hijacked by activists that are opposed to the development of all fossil fuels.” Girling, who met with State Department officials about the project yesterday, expressed frustration with the five-year review by U.S. regulators, saying the process for evaluating cross-border energy projects must change. He said he has stopped giving the company’s investors an estimate of when the approval process will be complete. “I think we have exhausted everything that could possibly be asked,” he said. Still, he said TransCanada, which is based in Calgary, would continue pushing to build the $5.3 billion link […]