Brent crude futures settled down by $1.73, or 2.3%, to
$72.97 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude fell $1.61, or 2.4%, at
$66.74.
At their session low, both benchmarks were down more than
$3. Brent fell nearly by 12% in the week, its biggest weekly fall since
December. WTI futures fell 13% since Friday's close, its biggest since last
April.
"The underlying fundamentals aren't as terrible as what
is being priced in here, but there is concern the oil is not as safe a place as
cash or gold," said John Kilduff, Partner at Again Capital LLC in New
York.
Oil prices tracked equity markets lower, dogged by the
banking sector crisis and worries about possible recession.
All three indexes were sharply lower in afternoon trading,
with financial stocks down the most among the major sectors of the S&P 500
following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank and with
trouble at Credit Suisse and First Republic Bank.
Prices had recovered some ground after support measures from
the European Central Bank and U.S. lenders, but dropped again when SVB
Financial Group said it had filed for reorganization.
Pressure stemmed from "the continued fragile state of
the market", said Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank.
Analysts still expect constrained global supply to support
oil prices in the foreseeable future.
OPEC+ members attributed this week's price weakness to
financial drivers rather than any supply and demand imbalance, adding that they
expected the market to stabilise.
WTI's fall this week to less than $70 a barrel for the first
time since December 2021 could spur the U.S. government to start refilling its
Strategic Petroleum Reserve, boosting demand.
And analysts expect China's demand recovery to add price
support, with U.S. crude exports to China in March heading towards their
highest in nearly two and a half years.
Saudi Arabia and Russia in a meeting on Thursday affirmed
their commitment to OPEC+'s decision last October to cut production targets by
two million barrels per day until the end of 2023.
An OPEC+ monitoring panel is due to meet on Apr. 3.
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