Oil prices have fallen as much as $16 from their peak price of $78.65 last month in what has been recorded as the biggest fall in oil prices since the first Gulf War in 1990.
Brent has fallen $16.02 since it hit a high of $78.65 on August 8th - its biggest decline from peak to trough since prices fell just ahead of the first Gulf War.
Brent is down more than 20 per cent from its peak, meeting the technical criteria for the start of a bear market.
US crude has dropped nearly $15 to hit a near six-month low of $63.53 a barrel today, a fall only a hair smaller than those in August-November 2005 and October-December 2004. In those cases, oil recovered to make new highs within five and eight months, respectively.
In percentage terms there have been bigger stumbles on oil's recent ascent, propelled steadily higher since 2002 by the war in Iraq, soaring Chinese demand, constrained oilfield and refinery production, devastating US Gulf Coast hurricanes, and most recently fears of a disruption to Iran's exports.
Technical analysts who study past price action for future direction, say the drop through the 200-day moving average last week and this week's fall below a three-year trend line - intact since mid-2003 - both send worrying signals.
They say that the global environment is different than two or three years ago, when central banks were aiding liquidity with low interest rates and investors were seeking alternatives to sluggish equity and fixed-income markets.
Tighter conditions from Japan to the United States may now limit the kind of investor influx that helped oil get back on track in each of the market's past corrections, while economic growth appears to be slowing, not accelerating.
Lastly the market has been in a contango structure (when a fee is paid by a buyer of securities to the seller for the privilege of deferring payment) for nearly two years, forcing the growing number of passive long-only investors to pay up each time they roll their positions forward - a potential deterrent for investing more.
However, while many analysts say the worst may not be over yet in the latest correction, most also agree that there remains scope for another attempt at surpassing the previous summit.
"If the fall is fast enough and hard enough, then there's momentum selling on the other side - that can have a sustained influence on prices, weeks or months," says Tobin Gorey, commodities strategist at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.
"I do think this dip could well outdo those last two falls, but I don't think it destroys the story."