I disagree. The Democrats need to neutralize the issue before the election. The need to find a way to act like they are addressing the problem, yet still appease their extreme "environmental" lobby.
They will try and say they are going to allow drilling, while in actuality making it nearly impossible. They can't rely on winning the election and having the administration making the rules too cumbersome, so they will create laws that allow environmental groups to indefinitely stop any new drilling through the courts.
They will then say the issue has been addressed, though it will take a while for the administration to come up with rules by which the new law will be implemented. Those rules will be challenged in court. Any new drilling sites will be challenged in court under a variety of environmental regulations. It will take many years for all the environmental studies to be performed and challenged, those cases to wind their way through the courts. The environmental groups will bring a series of suits, and sympathetic courts will serialize the cases saying that if the companies lose the one case there is no reason to hear the case on the next issue, so it should wait until the first has been resolved.
Even if the companies trying to drill win their cases, it will take many years before they can start drilling unless congress acts to actively enable drilling rather than impede it.
Either they attach the drilling ban to a necessary bill or they don’t. The only thing that can muck this up is something like the “gang of 10” thing going on which is ban on drilling by another name. Shut down congress.