Give money, get rights. It's really that simple. Assuming you don't want to buy the land, you can have an attorney draw you up documents the land owner would sign which gives you access to drill, relieves owner's liability, etc... Usually, you would first draw up an agreement where the owner would let you 'test' for water for a certain amount of time after which you would restore the land to its previous state. After that, you could lease that portion of land, buy it outright, or whatever.
The place to make money on this is outside small to medium size towns, in my opinion. Prior to the crash, there are many areas retail thought they were going but never did, so now you have vacant land sitting there doing nothing, for sale on the cheap either by makeshift LLCs or banks after foreclosure. Now, you get a deal in place to test for water and if it comes back good news, you buy the land cheap and resale to the nearby city(ies). Some cities are already doing this to skip the middle-man but most simply don't make it a priority. Not really sure if this is the answer you were looking for.
