“We certainly hope the state and the tribe can concur on who has regulatory authority,” said Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, a group representing more than 500 companies working in the state’s oil patch. “It doesn’t do anybody any good to try to determine whose rules you got to follow.” Natural gas is a byproduct of oil drilling, but a third of it is burned off in North Dakota — at a cost of more than $1 million a month in lost state revenue — because building infrastructure to capture the gas hasn’t kept pace with oil drilling. The Three Affiliated Tribes notified oil drillers late last week of the fee plan, which would require companies that burn-off natural gas to pay royalties beginning a month after a well has been drilled. Separate documents also furnished by the oil companies to the AP show that […]