(Bloomberg) -- Brent oil was on track for its worst run of quarterly losses in data going back more than three decades as persistent concerns over the demand outlook weighed on prices.
Futures in London traded near $74 a barrel, down for a fourth quarter, while West Texas Intermediate was heading for its first back-to-back decline since 2019. The market has faced a raft of headwinds, from aggressive interest-rate hikes to China’s sluggish economic recovery and resilient Russian supply.
That’s culminated in a lasting bearish tone which has managed to overwhelm any optimism around supply cuts by Saudi Arabia or robust summer demand. A recent short-lived uprising in Russia also failed to spark meaningful gains.
The outlook for the second half is mixed. There is some optimism the market will tighten and that will support prices, but Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and some of his peers said on Wednesday that more interest-rate increases are likely, a measure that will drag on energy consumption.
“July should in theory be tight,” RBC Capital Markets LLC analyst Michael Tran wrote in a note. “The conviction level for this single bullet month is high, but market apathy will set in for the balance of the year if the global physical market does not tighten.”
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