Crude oil prices suffered their largest quarterly loss since early 2020, capping off a tumultuous three-month span fueled by the war in Iran.
A barrel of West Texas Intermediate—the U.S. benchmark for oil prices—plunged 31 percent during the second quarter, with prices hovering around $70 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The last time U.S. oil prices logged a similar decline was in the first quarter of 2020, driven by the coronavirus pandemic-related demand shock and the Russia-Saudi Arabia price war.
Brent—the global seaborne benchmark for oil prices that is more sensitive to geopolitical tensions—witnessed similar trends in the April–June period, erasing 29 percent….