The oil companies are the ones making all the money.It may cost them $30 a barrel to pump the oil out of the ground and transport it to the refinery, while the oil they have to BUY on the open market costs three times as much. As you can see, it is much more profitable to own the well.
You are dreaming of decades past. The oil companies are not making 200% profits in today's prices.
ExxonMobil for example,
profit kept from total revenue = 7.7%
taxes paid from total revenue = 21.7%
Government makes 3 times the money than this company does from the sales.
http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/34088/000003408814000012/xom10k2013.htm
Ref page 36 & 53
I hear this often (I retired from BP).
My reply is:
Buy stock in big oil! How could you go wrong if they are profiting like you think!
Go for it , get a piece of it!
Unless the well is a dry hole. Then the costs of drilling, attempted completion, and reclamation of the site are just an expense.
Before the Bakken boom, wildcat wells in the Williston Basin were producers at a rate of 1 in 4 attempts, which is really attractive. I have worked in areas where that productive well to dry hole ratio is one in 75 (Nevada). The productive wells in the latter case tended to make thousands of barrels of oil per day, so the risk was considered worthwhile by some operators.