A southeast Iowa landowner is accusing an oil developer of offering him the services of a “$1,200 teenage prostitute” if he allowed the company to run a pipeline through his yard.
“Hughie Tweedy of rural Montrose told reporters Monday that a regional representative of Dakota Access LLC on three separate occasions offered ‘the sexual services of a woman’ if Tweedy would allow the pipeline to run through his property,” local radio station KCRG reported earlier this month.
- The climate news you need. Subscribe now to our engaging new weekly digest.
- You’ll receive exclusive, never-before-seen-content, distilled and delivered to your inbox every weekend.
- The Weekender: Succinct, solutions-focused, and designed with the discerning reader in mind.
The Dakota Access Pipeline “would run 1,134 miles, carrying 450,000 barrels of crude oil per day from the Bakken region of North Dakota to Pakota, Illinois, and will cost approximately $3.8 billion to construct,” Grist reports. “If the oil company in question, Dakota Access (a subsidiary of Energy Transfer), gets its way, the line would cross the entire state of Iowa, in addition to parts of Nebraska, North Dakota, and Illinois.”
The alleged bribe is under investigation, Core writes.
“I don’t care if it’s a highway to heaven paved in gold, I don’t want it on our property,” Tweedy told KCRG. “I want the pipeline to go around me, but honestly I don’t want the pipeline in the state of Iowa. I think the cost and benefits don’t add up.”
“We’d also venture that the costs outweigh the benefits of big-time polluting pipelines and—oh, yeah—offering women as currency,” Core adds. “Can we all—regardless of political stance on whether oil strengthens the economy or whatever—officially agree that that is just not OK? Yes? Good!”
