Landowners and Class Struggle: Life, Law and the Social Rent Relation in North Dakota

In the United States, land may be owned by governments, private landowners, corporations, tribes, etc. The rent relation involved in oil and gas extraction on private lands, however, remain largely unexplored in energy geography, and geography more broadly. In this dissertation, I explore the rent relation between the landowning class and oil capital in North Dakota. I argue rent is a class struggle where the interests of oil capital collide with the private landowning class over the capture of surplus-value. My analysis of class struggle is grounded in the social-historical relations that shaped private property and the rent relation in North Dakota. In Chapter 1, I explain private property and rents are a social relation, contrast surface and mineral owners, and describe the need for my research to fill a theoretical gap in rent theory between private landowners and capital. In Chapter 2, I argue the historical development of North Dakota, beginning with indigenous land tenure and later followed by the arrival of settlers via land grants set the stage for the split estate and resource extraction in North Dakota. In Chapter 3, I analyze class struggle between surface owners and oil companies through the lens of Vernon’s (1971) obsolescing bargain model. In Chapter 4, I unravel class struggle between mineral owners and oil capital over post-production costs lowering royalty payments to mineral owners. In Chapter 5, I analyze a court case litigated at the North Dakota State Supreme Court over nullifying the surface owner’s claim to land and rent. In Chapter 6, I argue oil price shocks from the COVID-19 pandemic led to a sudden oil production halt, prompting the state to draw on federal funds to implement a socioecological fix to rescue the oil industry from an ecological disaster in the making. My conclusion makes renewed calls for geographers to more deeply explore private property and rent relation in the United States.