North Dakota Shale-Oil Boom Rushes Past Riverbank Dwellers

North Dakota landowners say the state’s claim to oil deposits beneath riverbanks and lake shores is robbing them of millions of dollars in rent and royalties from a drilling boom that has quadrupled crude production in the past five years.

The state is accused in a lawsuit by private landowners along the Missouri and Yellowstone rivers of “unlawful taking of mineral interests” by improperly applying a public-use doctrine dating back to the state’s emergence from territorial status in 1889.