The oil price collapse is hurting not only U.S. shale firms and their drilling activities. The crash has severely crippled the royalty payments to a dozen million American oil and gas royalty owners of land on which companies pump oil. The value of the monthly checks to royalty owners in South Texas—home to the Eagle Ford shale play—has plummeted since the beginning of the year, due to the declining activity of oil firms which hastened to idle rigs after oil prices collapsed in early March, Reuters correspondent Jennifer Hiller reports . Paul Ruckman, a royalty owner in DeWitt County, for example, has seen the value of royalty checks crumble by 70 percent since the beginning of the year. The value of those checks will further drop in coming months, Ruckman told Reuters. The lower royalty income to residents in the oil communities in Texas and in other oil-producing states […]