Oil's Biggest Week Down in Years: Brent Falls 16 Percent for the Week, WTI Settles at $90.83 in New York
Friday was almost calm — Brent settled up 0.03 percent at $98.32 a barrel and West Texas Intermediate up 0.3 percent at $90.83 in New York — and the week was anything but: Brent fell 16 percent for the week, its steepest weekly percentage drop since the start of the pandemic, after the midterm results raised hopes of a de-escalation in the war on Iran.
The settlements were quiet and the week was historic. Brent crude for January delivery closed Friday at $98.32 a barrel in New York, up 0.03 percent on the day, and West Texas Intermediate for December delivery settled at $90.83, up 0.3 percent — two nearly flat prints at the end of a week in which, on the Reuters and LSEG read, Brent fell 16 percent, its steepest weekly percentage decline since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and its biggest absolute fall in LSEG data going back to 1988. WTI fell about 13 percent for the week on the same read; Bloomberg's front-month measure put the weekly loss at about 13.2 percent, the largest since 2022.
The turn came on Wednesday, and it came from the election. Oil fell 8 percent in that single session, settling at two-month lows, after the Democrats swept the U.S. midterm elections — a result traders read as raising the odds of a de-escalation in the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran and, with it, the return of barrels the conflict had priced out. Prices swung within a $19 range across the week, per Bloomberg, before Friday's steadier close.
The floor under the fall is also in the reporting: attacks on vessels in the Middle East continued through the week, and that continuing risk is what kept a de-escalation repricing from becoming a rout. Energy shares took the equity side of the same trade — the sector was the S&P 500's weakest this week, down nearly 12 percent in the evening read.
For New York, the number that travels is the settlement, not the swing: crude is the input under heating, freight and airfares heading into winter, and a 13-to-16 percent weekly fall — if it holds — is the largest single-week relief in that input in years. Whether it holds is a question about tanker lanes and diplomacy, not about Friday's three-cent Brent gain, and this desk files the next settlement without calling the direction.
