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By Bloomberg

Brent crude fell close to $60 a barrel as the United Arab Emirates said OPEC will resist output cuts even if prices slump as low as $40. West Texas Intermediate extended its slump from the lowest in more than five years.

Futures slid as much as 2.5 percent in London and 2.7 percent in New York. The market will stabilize itself and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries will wait at least three months before considering an emergency meeting, U.A.E Energy Minister Suhail Al-Mazrouei said. The International Energy Agency cut its 2015 demand forecast by 230,000 barrels a day last week, trimming the estimate for the fourth time in five months.

Oil has lost more than 20 percent since OPEC decided at a meeting in Vienna last month to maintain its production target, resisting calls from members including Venezuela to cut output. Drillers in the U.S., pumping crude at the highest rate in more than three decades, idled the most rigs in almost two years as prices sank further.

“Who’s going to cut first? That’s the global poker game going on at the moment,” Michael McCarthy, a chief strategist at CMC Markets in Sydney, said by phone today. “The market is clearly focused on the negatives for oil.”

Brent for January settlement fell as much as $1.57 to $60.28 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange and was at 60.70 at 10:08 a.m. in Sydney. The contract, which expires tomorrow, slid $1.83 to $61.85 on Dec. 12, the lowest close since July 2009. The more active February future was $1.14 lower at $61.01. The European benchmark crude was at a premium of $4.15 to WTI, from $3.14 a week ago.

OPEC Output

WTI for January delivery dropped as much as $1.56 to $56.25 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract decreased $2.14 to $57.81 a barrel on Dec. 12, the lowest since May 2009. The volume of all futures traded was about 37 percent above the 100-day average. Prices have decreased 43 percent this year.

Saudi Arabia led OPEC’s decision on Nov. 27 to maintain its collective quota at 30 million barrels a day, resisting calls to reduce output to address a global glut. Venezuela supports an emergency meeting given the price slide, though the country hasn’t officially requested one, a foreign ministry official said Dec. 12. The group is due to meet again on June 5.

“We are not going to change our minds because the prices went to $60 or to $40,” U.A.E.’s Mazrouei told Bloomberg Dec. 14 at a conference in Dubai. “We’re not targeting a price; the market will stabilize itself. We need to wait for at least a quarter” to consider an urgent session, he said.

U.S. Drillers

OPEC, which supplies about 40 percent of the world’s oil, pumped 30.56 million barrels a day in November, exceeding its target for a sixth straight month, a Bloomberg survey of companies, producers and analysts showed.

U.S. rigs targeting oil fell by 29 to 1,546 in the week ended Dec. 12, the lowest since June and the biggest decline since December 2012, according to data from Baker Hughes Inc. A combination of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing has unlocked supplies from shale formations including the Eagle Ford in Texas and the Bakken in North Dakota.

Production in the U.S. expanded to 9.12 million barrels a day through Dec. 5, data from the Energy Information Administration shows. That’s the fastest rate in weekly records that started in January 1983, according to the Energy Department’s statistical arm.