Opec has moved forward an emergency meeting to next week after US oil futures prices fell below $70 a barrel.

Abdalla Salem El-Badri, the Opec secretary general, said the cartel had decided to re-schedule an extraordinary meeting scheduled for next month would now be brought forward to October 24th.

Opec on Wednesday said it would need to pump about 31.3m barrels a day in the first quarter of next year to balance the market, well below its current output of 32.2m b/d. The forecast opens the door for a large production cut at the emergency session. Iran, one of Opec’s most hawkish members, on Wednesday reiterated that the cartel should cut production.

In afternoon trading in London WTI futures fell more than $5 after the US Department of Energy reported an unexpectedly large increase in crude oil inventories and rapid weakening demand for gasoline and heating oil.

Nymex November West Texas Intermediate fell $5.10 to $69.45 a barrel. Oil hit an intraday low of $69.15 a barrel, the lowest level since Augusut 2007. ICE November Brent dropped 4.20 to $66.60 a barrel.

The DoE said total oil demand in the US averaged in the last four weeks at 18.6m barrels a day, 8.9 per cent below the same period a year ago.

The fresh price falls came a day after Opec, the oil cartel, warned of “dramatically worsening conditions” in the credit market and a “negative impact on the real economy”, and Rio Tinto, one of the world’s largest mining companies, signalled that Chinese commodities demand was weakening.

In its monthly report, the cartel said that even if governments were successful in unfreezing credit markets in the near future, “the fallout on the real economy from the financial market headwinds is expected to be considerable”.

Olivier Jakob, of Swiss-based consultant Petromatrix, said: “If the global markets are not able to provide a ‘V-shaped’ recovery and global deleveraging continues, the [oil price] risk for the next 30 days is clearly skewed to the downside.”