Yes, but you don’t pay that money before you find anything. And you have to give the oil companies leeway to profit, or they are just not going to do the deal. There is just too much risk. What you are proposing sounds just like the estate tax. “Oh, thank you so much for growing your business for us. We’re taking 45% of it.”
But I agree with you, we need to drill, baby, drill!
I agree that the oil companies should pay only for what comes out of the ground AND they should get allowances (discounts, tax credits, etc) to defray their exploration, development and extraction costs.