… but incompetence and backfire never stopped Joe Biden from his policy preferences. As we all know, every time we go to the grocery store and fill up at the gas pumps, assuming we all can afford to fill up.

Needless to say, Joe Biden’s energy policies have backfired on him, as has his economic policies. What happens when the two combine, as Biden and his team will try with their latest sanctions package to cap the price of Russian oil? Even the White House knows what’s coming, according to Bloomberg:

Some Biden administration officials are growing concerned that their plan to cap the price of oil purchased from Russia may backfire after the OPEC+ alliance’s surprise production cut last week, according to people familiar with the matter.

The plan seeks to keep enough Russian supplies on the global market to stave off a spike in worldwide oil prices, but the proposal has been complicated since its inception and the subject of intense diplomacy with European allies. Its prospects have now been potentially undermined by the OPEC+ move to slash production by 2 million barrels per day, the people said.

Nonetheless, the price-cap plan is proceeding and maintains widespread support across the administration and among many allies, the people said. The proposal is viewed as the best choice among bad options to curtail Russia’s oil revenues and financing for its war in Ukraine, one person said.

But some officials are worried that the OPEC+ production cut has increased volatility in markets, and a US-driven move to cap Russia’s oil prices could instead result in a spike.

How could it not result in a spike? Capping the price of Russian oil in the market would essentially remove that supply from consumption — assuming this plan even works. The Russians would lose money by selling it, so the natural action would be to hoard it for better market conditions. Bloomberg notes that Putin might cut off exports in retaliation too, but either way Biden will get the same result: an artificial shortage of crude.

Biden now wants to use oil as leverage, but he didn’t do any of the ground work necessary for that strategy to succeed. Biden spent all of his presidential campaign calling the Saudis “pariahs” and threatening to downgrade ties and cooperation with Riyadh over the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Even when Biden belatedly figured out that he’d need the Saudis for any sanctions regimen against Russia to work, his trip to Riyadh turned into a disaster when Biden got pressured into insulting Mohammed bin Salman during their meeting.

But according to people inside the Saudi government, Mr. Biden’s July visit did little to change Prince Mohammed’s determination to chart a foreign policy independent of U.S. influence, in a break from almost 80 years of American-Saudi partnership.

If anything, said the people inside the Saudi government, the visit angered Prince Mohammed, who was upset that Mr. Biden went public with his private comments to the Saudi royal over Mr. Khashoggi’s death, which prompted Saudi officials to publicly contradict Mr. Biden’s characterization of their interaction. …

Prince Mohammed has told advisers that he isn’t willing to sacrifice much for the Biden administration, said the people inside the Saudi government, citing its critical view of the Saudi war in Yemen, bid to close a nuclear deal with Iran that Riyadh opposes and Mr. Biden’s own comments on the prince.

In August, the Saudis had planned to push OPEC+ to raise oil production by 500,000 barrels a day in an effort to please Mr. Biden, but Prince Mohammed ordered the increase lowered to a token 100,000 barrels a day after the Biden visit, the people inside the Saudi government said.

The U.S. State Department’s energy-security envoy, Amos Hochstein, sent the Saudi energy minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, an email that suggested he had broken his word promising a larger increase, people familiar with the matter said.

The email angered Prince Abdulaziz and strengthened his resolve to forge an oil policy independent of the U.S., the people said.

But even that was unnecessary. We could easily impact the price of oil on global markets and strategically drain Putin’s profits by vastly escalating domestic production in the US. If we dismantled Biden’s restrictive policies on exploration, extraction, and refining, we would vault back into position as a significant exporter in those markets. We could scale that up to keep oil prices low and organically cap the price Putin (and Iran) could get for their crude output. That would also have sidelined OPEC+ and their own desires to manipulate global outcomes through the price of oil.

Biden’s decision to throw in with the Greenies and fulminate about a mythical “incredible transition” to wind and solar power in a decade has been the father of all his backfires. Why would anyone expect that to change with his byzantine “price cap” on Russian oil? Even the White House clearly doesn’t expect that to change.