“Royalties saved our place,” said James Horob, a farmer in northwest North Dakota, who used oil royalties to rescue his family’s farm from bankruptcy in 2008 and replace equipment that had been auctioned off. “We’re lucky to have what we got.”

However, the royalty income that mineral owners like Horob get can depend in part on the state where they live. In North Dakota, estimates show that in recent years companies have been deducting hundreds of millions of dollars annually to help cover the costs incurred once oil and gas leave the ground on their way to being sold. North Dakota officials have not stepped in to help royalty owners, even though the state, in its own leases, has explicitly prohibited oil and gas companies from taking deductions from government royalty payments since 1979, as the North Dakota Monitor and ProPublica reported this month.