Brent, the London-traded global benchmark for crude, settled down $1.51, or 2.7%, at $54.26 per barrel on Tuesday.
West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the US crude benchmark, fell $1.53, or 3%, to settle at $49.90 per barrel. It was the first time in two weeks that the WTI had closed beneath the key $50 support level.
Since the week began, both crude benchmarks had lost more than 6 percent each of their value.
"Global oil markets are still struggling to find the thin line between horror and reality," said Phil Flynn, energy analyst at Chicago’s Price Futures Group. "No matter how bad the coronavirus turns out to be, almost assuredly we know that fear will, at specific points, exceed what is real."
Stocks on Wall Street also plunged for a second straight day, suffering their biggest two-day decline since 2018, as US officials warned that the spread of the coronavirus contagion might be inevitable in the world’s largest economy.
The Paris-based International Energy Agency has forecast that global demand for crude as a whole will drop 435,000 barrels daily this quarter, versus the opening quarter of 2019. The US Energy Information Administration, meanwhile, expects worldwide demand for oil to fall by 310,000 barrels daily for all of 2020.
