FARGO -- North Dakotans, you're about to give away millions of dollars to out-of-state oil companies. Again. If you care. History shows you don't.

The money is yours, by law and affirmed by the state supreme court. It was to be spent on public schools, the same ones funded by the taxes you like to gripe about so much. If you care.

The headlines you've been reading in recent weeks about natural gas royalties, supreme court rulings and the North Dakota Board of University and School Lands probably looked like a pile of indecipherable governmental and legal gobbledygook.

Who cares, right?

You should. Because what's happening isn't indecipherable at all. It's simple.

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Oil and gas companies have cheated North Dakota out of tens of millions of dollars and they don't want to pay it back.

That's it. Period.

What happened, in language as decipherable as possible, was this: For decades oil and gas companies were underpaying the royalties owed to North Dakota by deducting costs that weren't allowed to be deducted. It was a violation of their lease agreements.

The companies were supposed to pay royalties on the gross revenue from North Dakota natural gas, period. The companies, though, first took out money to pay for the cost of making the gas marketable (such as removing hydrogen sulfide) and then paid North Dakota's royalties on the remaining amount.

Court documents say the difference might have been as much as 20-30%. What was supposed to go to North Dakotans instead went to profits.

The state audited the oil company Newfield Exploration in 2016 and confirmed what was happening. About 40 other companies operating in North Dakota have been doing the same trick.

Newfield challenged the state and a district court sided with the Houston-based company. The state appealed and in July 2019 the North Dakota Supreme Court unanimously reversed the district court ruling in a crystal-clear, five-page ruling that stomps Newfield's claims.

(Read the N.D. Supreme Court ruling on Newfield Exploration:)

That ruling led the state to send letters to the oil companies that shorted North Dakota, asking them to figure out the money they owed and to pay it retroactively. The letter indicated a 90-day deadline, with statute-mandated interest and penalties for payments made after that.

The oil companies and their sycophants went ballistic, predictably, saying that three months was too tight a timeline to figure out how much they owed from shorting North Dakota. It's not.

Gov. Doug Burgum sided with oil interests, requesting that the royalty repayment issue be reconsidered by the land board at its most recent meeting.

It was. And what we learned was this: The oil companies don't want to pay royalties from years ago. They only want to pay retroactive royalties from the time they were audited in 2016-17.

Oh, and they want to negotiate those payments.

It'll cost the state's public schools and colleges millions upon millions of dollars.

North Dakota, led by the governor, is again bending itself in a pretzel to give the oil companies your money even though the legal argument is on the state's side.

It's your money, North Dakotans.

You could be mad about it if you wanted.

If you care.