New Delhi, July 3 -- DUBAI - For three months, oil markets carried the most expensive geopolitical premium since the 1970s. On Thursday, they gave almost all of it back.

30 GMT, touching pre-conflict levels for the first time since February 28, the day before Iran and the United States went to war. From its peak of more than $126 a barrel on April 30, Brent has now shed more than 38 percent in ten weeks, an unwinding that has moved faster than most traders anticipated when the Strait of Hormuz reopened under the memorandum of understanding brokered by Qatar in June, Al Jazeera reported.

The fall matters to everyone who buys fuel, not only to traders. Airlines, shipping companies, and manufacturers that spent the spring absorbing triple-...