Oil teeters at brink of $30 a barrel as rout refuses to relent

By Catherine Ngai

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oil slid to within pennies of $30 a barrel on Tuesday, extending a relentless selloff that has wiped almost 20 percent off prices this year amid deepening concerns about fragile Chinese demand and the absence of output restraint.

With prices dropping another 4 percent for a seventh day of losses, traders have all but given up attempting to predict where the new-year rout will end, with momentum-driven dealing and overwhelmingly bearish sentiment engulfing the market. Some analysts warned of $20 a barrel; Standard Chartered said fund selling may not relent until it reaches $10.

By Tuesday, the crash had become almost self-fulfilling, with speculators too afraid to buy for fear of being burnt by another false bottom in the latest leg of an 18-month slump.

"The momentum is too strong to the bearish side, even if fundamentally nothing has changed," said Dominick Chirichella, a senior partner at Energy Management Institute.

With prices now below break-even costs for many producers, particularly in the once-thriving U.S. shale patch, and the costly Canadian oil sands producers barely making $15 a barrel, an extended slump has caused financial pain to flare across the world, threatening corporate bankruptcies and fiscal strain.

Benchmark Brent crude had fallen $1.06 to $30.49 a barrel, for a 3.4 percent loss, by 1:10PM EST (18:10 GMT) after hitting a low of $30.40.

U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude(WTI) fell $1.27 to $30.14 per barrel, a 4.0 percent loss, after touching a low of $30.06, which was last seen in December 2003.

Prices firmed early in the day after a deadly suicide bombing rocked central Istanbul, and Nigeria's oil minister said a "couple" of Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries members had requested an emergency meeting.

But they then nosedived anew after the United Arab Emirates oil minister quashed talk of a possible meeting, saying the group strategy was working. OPEC has rejected calls by some of its members to curb output, opting instead to pump full throttle to defend market share rather than shore up prices.

Oil has tumbled more than 18 percent this year alone, the worst seven-day run since the financial crisis. The long list of negative factors also includes the weakening economy and ailing stock market of No. 2 consumer China, the rising U.S. dollar, which makes oil more costly, and the surprising resilience of U.S. shale drillers in the face of the price slide.

Adding to supply fears, Iraq, the second-biggest OPEC producer, plans to export a record of around 3.63 million barrels per day in February, said trade sources.

(Additional reporting by Simon Falush in London, Henning Gloystein in Singapore and Aaron Sheldrick in Tokyo; editing by Jason Neely and Alden Bentley)