Glad to hear they're not shutting down!
You got it right: a tax on drivers. I'm not a fan of more taxes, but a disincentive to burn fossil fuels would be one place where I'd tax if I were king.
I didn't explain the mechanism very well, but I figure that a barrel produced in North America would always fetch the high price, no matter what. So OPEC doesn't game the system, maybe the "high price" would be a moving average. The refinery would be indifferent as to where the oil came from since it all would cost the same amount. Buy from Texas and pay the highest world price to the producer. Buy from OPEC when the current world price had sunk, producer gets paid the current (cheap) world price and the difference between that and highest world price would go to the debit.
I'm sure they'd cry foul, since this would be considered a "tariff", but I think it could be argued for since they are not playing fair when it comes to manipulating the price of oil.