Biden’s Billion-Dollar Oil Trade Faces a Big Test

The U.S. government’s attempt to refill the skyscraper-sized caverns that hold the country’s emergency oil reserves is coming with a crash course in energy markets: How to think more like a trader. 

President Biden last year authorized an emergency sale of more than 180 million barrels from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to ease gasoline prices that skyrocketed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The Energy Department sold high, averaging roughly $95 a barrel. 

Now...