Oil futures settled with a drop of 3% on Monday as investors cashed in on a seven-session streak of gains, according to Bloomberg MarketWatch.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, September West Texas Intermediate crude fell $1.47, or 3%, to settle at $47.05 a barrel. That was the largest one-day dollar and percentage decline since Aug. 1.
The contract expired at Monday’s settlement, with October which ended at $47.41 a barrel, down $1.70, or 3.5%, now the front-month contract.
On the London ICE Futures Exchange, October Brent crude, the global benchmark, fell $1.72, or 3.4%, to end trading at $49.16 a barrel.
Growing expectations that heavyweight oil producers might reconsider a production freeze at their meeting next month had lifted the crude oil market back into a bull market last week; however, optimism has fizzled out.
Driven by producers aiming to expand their market, overproduction has caused prices to tank in the past two years to as low as $26 per barrel in February. While prices have clawed back significantly, they are still much lower than the $100-plus threshold seen in mid-2014, a level that analysts say will be hard to reclaim given the overhang of product.
On the New York Mercantile Exchange, September natural gas climbed by 9.5 cents, or 3.7%, to settle at $2.679 per million British thermal units.